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hound's tooth
hound's toothnouna pattern of broken or jagged checks, used on a variety of fabrics.
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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
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
Said one retail store manager: "Our stocks are as clean as a hound's tooth."
From Time Magazine Archive
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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
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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
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As clean as a hound's tooth, and not a lost motion of a feather.
From The Golf Course Mystery by Chester K. Steele
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
An evangelist's accounting Billy Graham has always endeavored to be hound's-tooth clean about money.
From Time Magazine Archive
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"It's inevitable," said a tall Tanganyikan in hound's-tooth tweeds.
From Time Magazine Archive
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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
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"No kidding, you gonna use your hound's-tooth tonight or not? I spilled some crap all over my gray flannel."
From "The Catcher in the Rye" by J. D. Salinger
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.