See also: toothcomb and tooth comb

English

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Noun

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tooth-comb (plural tooth-combs)

  1. Alternative form of toothcomb
    • 1850, Al Hariri of Basra, “The Makamah of Damietta. The Words of Hareth ibn-Hammam.”, in Theodore Preston, transl., Makamat: Or Rhetorical Anecdotes of Al Hariri of Basra [], London: [] W[illia]m H[oughton] Allen & Co., []; Paris: B. Duprat, →OCLC, footnote 4, page 374:
      When the Arabs speak of things as alike in respect of good qualities, they call them 'as like as the teeth of a tooth-comb;' whereas, if they speak of similarity in bad qualities, they say 'as like as the teeth of an ass.'
    • 1854, Octavius Freire Owen, “The Degenerate Bees”, in John Gay, The Fables of John Gay Illustrated. [], London: George Routledge & Co. [], →OCLC, footnote 2, page 228:
      Thin-skinned dunces, too, in power, hate satire, to use Sidney [i.e., Sydney] Smith's simile, for the same reason as "fleas detest tooth-combs," because they cannot escape it.
    • 2015, Susan Cachel, “The Eocene Primate Radiation”, in Fossil Primates (Cambridge Studies in Biological and Evolutionary Anthropology), Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 152:
      Must interest has centered on the first appearance of the prosimian tooth-comb or tooth-scraper [...]. The tooth-comb is formed by lower incisors and canines that are elongated and slender, and that form a procumbent unit in the anterior mandible. Upper incisors are lost, reduced, or moved to accommodate the tooth-comb.

Verb

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tooth-comb (third-person singular simple present tooth-combs, present participle tooth-combing, simple past and past participle tooth-combed)

  1. Alternative form of toothcomb