bodkin
Americannoun
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a small, pointed instrument for making holes in cloth, leather, etc.
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a long pinshaped instrument used by women to fasten up the hair.
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a blunt, needlelike instrument for drawing tape, cord, etc., through a loop, hem, or the like.
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Obsolete. a small dagger; stiletto.
noun
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a blunt large-eyed needle used esp for drawing tape through openwork
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archaic a dagger
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printing a pointed steel tool used for extracting characters when correcting metal type
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archaic a long ornamental hairpin
Etymology
Origin of bodkin
1350–1400; Middle English badeken, bo ( i ) dekyn, of uncertain origin
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
In fact, that “serpent of old Nile” — Shakespeare’s phrase — probably used Egyptian cobra venom, possibly secreted in a hollow bodkin that she carried wound in her hair.
From Washington Post • Sep. 21, 2016
Even on Miss Mansfield, I can't imagine anything less interesting than a "bare bodkin."
From Time Magazine Archive
In the "To be or not to be" soliloquy, fardels is replaced, but the word bodkin remains.
From Time Magazine Archive
To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin/ That makes calamity of so long life;/ For who would fardels bear, till Birnam Wood do come to Dunsinane .
From Time Magazine Archive
The bone implements were barbless arrows, a well-shaped and sharply pointed bodkin made of the horn of the roe-deer, and other tools made of reindeer horn.
From A Manual of the Antiquity of Man by MacLean, J. P. (John Patterson)
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
