canon bit
English
Etymology
From French canon, from Latincanon (“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)
- (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 960102938:
- […] 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 868004604, book:
- blind the disunions of complaining nature in chains together, and curb them with a canon bit
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References
- canon bit in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913