canon bit

English

Etymology

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

canon bit (plural canon bits)

1. (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

• “canon bit”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.