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• hound's tooth
  hound's tooth

  noun

  a pattern of broken or jagged checks, used on a variety of fabrics.
• hound's-tooth
  hound's-tooth

  adjective

  woven or printed with a pattern of broken or jagged checks.

hound's tooth

¹ American  

noun

1. a pattern of broken or jagged checks, used on a variety of fabrics.

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hound's-tooth ² American  

[houndz-tooth] / ˈhaʊndzˌtuθ /

adjective

1. woven or printed with a pattern of broken or jagged checks.

   a hound's-tooth jacket.

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Etymology

Origin of hound's tooth¹

First recorded in 1935–40

Origin of hound's-tooth²

First recorded in 1955–60

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

hound's tooth hound's-tooth

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

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

Ike was at first undecided about whether or not to drop his running mate and told reporters that anyone on his ticket would have to prove himself "clean as a hound's tooth."

From Time Magazine Archive

And since that time the game has been as clean as a hound’s tooth.

From Bert Wilson's Fadeaway Ball by J. W. Duffield

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

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

"It's inevitable," said a tall Tanganyikan in hound's-tooth tweeds.

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

"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