† corking-pin Obs.
Also 7 calkin, cawking, 8 corkin pin.
[App. corrupted from cawking, calkin, as spelt by the pinmakers in 1690. Origin unknown.]
‘A pin of the largest size’ (J.).
| ? 1690 Pinmakers' Case in oppos. to Killigrew's Bill (Broadside, Brit. Mus.) Double long whites alias Calkins. ― Case or Petit. of Pinmakers (London) (Broadside, Brit. Mus.) Double Long Whites, al. Cawkings. 1727 Swift Gulliver ii. v. 139 A corking-pin that stuck in the good gentlewoman's stomacher. 1768 Sterne Sent. Journ., Case of Delicacy, I could hear two or three corking pins fall out of the curtain. 1770 Foote Lame Lover i. Wks. 1799 II. 62, I gave my German a challenge..to drive a corkin pin into the calves of our legs. 1824 Scott Redgauntlet xix, Cristal Nixon..had..secured it [his riding-skirt] with large corking-pins. 1840 Hood Kilmansegg cxiii, It pierced her heart like a corking-pin. 1848 Mrs. Gaskell Mary Barton II. xvii. 249 Some insect, which he was impaling on a corking-pin. |