canon bit
English edit
Etymology edit
From French canon, from Latin canon (“a rule”). (This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)
Noun edit
canon bit (plural canon bits)
- (obsolete, rare) The part of a bit which is put in a horse's mouth.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
- […] A goodly person, and could menage faire
His stubborne steed with curbed canon bit
- 1644, J[ohn] M[ilton], The Doctrine or Discipline of Divorce: […], 2nd edition, London: [s.n.], →OCLC, book:
- blind the disunions of complaining nature in chains together, and curb them with a canon bit
References edit
- “canon bit”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.