hound's tooth
noun
a pattern of broken or jagged checks, used on a variety of fabrics.
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hound's tooth
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hound's-tooth
hound's-toothadjectivewoven or printed with a pattern of broken or jagged checks.
hound's tooth
1 Americannoun
hound's-tooth
2
American
[houndz-tooth]
/ ˈhaʊndzˌtuθ /
adjective
Etymology
Origin of hound's tooth1
First recorded in 1935–40
Origin of hound's-tooth2
First recorded in 1955–60
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.
See Examples For:
To earn it the investigators must appear every day to be clean as a hound’s tooth.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 15, 2017
Preferring hound's tooth jackets and mixed tweeds to ambassadorial tails, he would sooner talk on Scottish wild flowers and Chinese porcelains than on politics and policies.
From Time Magazine Archive
Said one retail store manager: "Our stocks are as clean as a hound's tooth."
From Time Magazine Archive
A "sense of Congress" resolution with no legal force, the code urges officials to be loyal, hardworking, fair, clean as a hound's tooth.
From Time Magazine Archive
The off hoss is puffed some for'ard but if yer husband'll put on a cold bandage ev'ry night it'll make them legs smoother n a hound's tooth.
From Eben Holden, a tale of the north country by Irving Bacheller
Agee saw an “arrogant neophyte” and a film that had been constructed around her as snugly as the form-fitting hound’s-tooth suit she wears so well.
From New York Times ● Aug. 13, 2014
"It's inevitable," said a tall Tanganyikan in hound's-tooth tweeds.
From Time Magazine Archive
Delaware's hound's-tooth polisher, Republican John J. Williams, led a parade of five Republican Senators provisionally suggesting an Adams resignation.
From Time Magazine Archive
An evangelist's accounting Billy Graham has always endeavored to be hound's-tooth clean about money.
From Time Magazine Archive
"Yeah. Listen. If you're not going out anyplace special, how 'bout lending me your hound's-tooth jacket?"
From "The Catcher in the Rye" by J. D. Salinger
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.
