toothcomb

See also: tooth comb and tooth-comb

English

WOTD – 2 September 2020

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈtuːθkəʊm/

• Audio (Received Pronunciation):

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈtuθˌkoʊm/

• Audio (General American):

  (file)

• Hyphenation: tooth‧comb

Etymology 1

The noun is derived from fine toothcomb, a rebracketing of fine-tooth comb. The verb is derived from the noun.

Noun

toothcomb (plural toothcombs)

1. (British, chiefly figurative, sometimes proscribed) A comb with finely spaced teeth, chiefly as a metaphorical means of making a thorough search.

   The police went through all his possessions with a toothcomb.

   • 1828 April 19, The Hobart Town Courier, Hobart, Tasmania, page 3, column 2:

     [advertisement] [A] quantity of Pencil Cases, Fans, Tooth-combs, and Nail-brushes, a Pier-glass, and various other very useful articles.

   • 1850, Al Hariri of Basra, “The Makamah of Damietta. The Words of Hareth ibn-Hammam.”, in Theodore Preston, transl., Makamat: Or Rhetorical Anecdotes of Al Hariri of Basra […], London: […] W[illia]m H[oughton] Allen & Co., […]; Paris: B. Duprat, →OCLC, footnote 4, page 374:

     When the Arabs speak of things as alike in respect of good qualities, they call them 'as like as the teeth of a tooth-comb;' whereas, if they speak of similarity in bad qualities, they say 'as like as the teeth of an ass.'

   • 1853 January 14, James Henry, Notes of a Twelve Years’ Voyage of Discovery in the First Six Books of the Eneis‎^[1], Dresden: Meinhold and Sons, →OCLC:

     Racks, shears and toothcombs here, sit down: / With such a shaggy, shockdog crown / Who but some rustic, clodpoll clown / Would think of venturing into town?

   • 1854, Octavius Freire Owen, “The Degenerate Bees”, in John Gay, The Fables of John Gay Illustrated. […], London: George Routledge & Co. […], →OCLC, footnote 2, page 228:

     Thin-skinned dunces, too, in power, hate satire, to use Sidney [i.e., Sydney] Smith's simile, for the same reason as "fleas detest tooth-combs," because they cannot escape it.

   • 1868 March 1, Matthew Browne, “A Working Man’s Courtship”, in Norman McLeod, editor, Good Words, volume IX, London: Strahan and Co., […], →OCLC, letter XI, page 188, column 2:

     Ah, Sir, you needn't look. I never had nothing in my head since I was born, and I always use the toothcomb.

   • 1873 August 1, “Annual General Meeting at Maldon, 1st August, 1873”, in Transactions of the Essex Archæological Society, volume V, part IV, Colchester, Essex: […] Museum, Colchester Castle, […] “Essex & West Suffolk Gazette” Office, […], →ISSN, →OCLC, page 318:

     Mr. John Oxley Parker exhibited the following miscellaneous objects found at Othona (Bradwell-juxta-Mare), [...] two pieces of Roman tooth combs, [...]

   • 1877, Douglas Straight, “Joey the Tumbler”, in Old Pictures in a New Frame, London: Frederick Warne and Co., […], →OCLC, page 29:

     I wandered up and down the streets, vainly hoping to be struck by some brilliant inspiration that should select for me the sort of work to take in hand. I would be a crossing-sweeper, a shoeblack, a vendor of cherries, a seller of penny watches or tooth[-]combs.

   • 1878, Ouida [pseudonym; Maria Louise Ramé], chapter XXIII, in Friendship […], volume II, London: Chatto & Windus, […], →OCLC, page 259:

     Queer thing, isn't it, that all the pretty things that please one are all irretrievably wrong, and everything that sets one's teeth on edge, and scratches through one's brain like a metallic tooth comb, are all scientifically exquisite.

   • 1885, Clinton [Thomas] Dent, “A Day across Country”, in Above the Snow Line: Mountaineering Sketches between 1870 and 1880, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →OCLC, page 121:

     Gradually, as we became more wet, we grew more desperate, and before long floundered down as regardless of bumps as a bluebottle in a conservatory: at one moment slithering over wet slabs of rock to which damp tufts of moss were loosely adherent, at another climbing carefully over gigantic toothcombs of fallen trees, then plunging head foremost—sometimes not exactly head foremost—through jungle-like masses of long grass and dwarf brushwood.

   • 1913 December 13, “The Smuggling of Arms”, in The North-China Herald and Supreme Court & Consular Gazette: The Weekly Edition of the North-China Daily News, volume CIX (New Series), number 2418, Shanghai: […] North-China Daily News & Herald, Ld., →OCLC, page 791, column 3:

     The only instrument that will adequately meet the case is a general Consular warrant under which the police shall be able to make a house to house search, swooping down upon any premises which they have reason to suspect, and, metaphorically speaking, drawing the contents through a tooth[-]comb.

   • 1924 March, Agatha Christie, “The Million Dollar Bond Robbery”, in Poirot Investigates, London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, published 2007, →ISBN, page 126:

     Word was passed to the Customs authorities, and every soul that left the ship was gone over with a toothcomb!

   • 1957, Ian Fleming, “The Tunnel of Rats”, in From Russia, with Love, London: Vintage Books, published 2012, →ISBN, part 2 (The Execution), page 197:

     The Russians were suspicious as hell. I gather they went over the place with a toothcomb when they got back, looking for microphones and bombs and so on.

   • 1981, Peter James, chapter 9, in Dead Letter Drop, London: Pan Books, published 2014, →ISBN, page 73:

     I want you to go through its staff with the finest toothcomb you can lay your hands on, and to miss out nothing, absolutely nothing.

   • 1987, [John St.] Bodfan Gruffydd, “Acknowledgements”, in Tree Form, Size and Colour: A Guide to Selection, Planting and Design, London: E. & F. N. Spon, Chapman & Hall, published 1995, →ISBN, page xi:

     Jeremy Purseglove went through the tables with a tooth comb, which helped no end with ecology and naming; [...]

   • 2013 September 2, Margaret Hodge (chair), “Oral Evidence”, in Committee of Public Accounts, House of Commons of the United Kingdom, Charges for Customer Telephone Lines: Twenty-seventh Report of Session 2013–14 […] (HC 617)‎^[2], London: The Stationery Office, published 11 November 2013, →ISBN, archived from the original on 11 November 2013, question 103, page Ev 16:

     I just want some assurance that HMRC [Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs] will go through the deal with a toothcomb to ensure that the taxpayer gets the proper benefit under the law of the tax that Vodafone should pay on the massive windfall profit that it is making.

Usage notes

Although regarded by some as erroneous, the word is now said by the Oxford English Dictionary to be “accepted in standard English”.

Alternative forms

• tooth comb
• tooth-comb

Translations

comb with finely spaced teeth, chiefly as a metaphorical means of making a thorough search

• Bulgarian: старателно претърсване n (staratelno pretǎrsvane)
• Portuguese: pente dental m, pente fino m (metaphorical)

Verb

toothcomb (third-person singular simple present toothcombs, present participle toothcombing, simple past and past participle toothcombed) (British, transitive, sometimes proscribed)

1. (rare) To use a toothcomb on (something).
   • 2013, Judith Lissauer Cromwell, “Nursing”, in Florence Nightingale, Feminist, Jefferson, N.C., London: McFarland & Company, →ISBN, page 234:

     8.15 am. Tooth-combed seven heads, had grand sport; mixed bag, measured one teaspoonful; cleanliness is next to godliness!

2. (figurative) To search (something) thoroughly.

   The flat was toothcombed for any trace of drugs.

   • 1967, Joan Lindsay, Picnic at Hanging Rock, London: Vintage Books, published 2013, →ISBN, page 50:

     A number of locals, including Michael Fitzhubert and Albert Crundall, were already assisting the police in the careful toothcombing of the surrounding scrub.

   • 2013 January 11, Paul Smith, “Provenance”, in Saving a Grasshopper, [Bloomington, Ind.]: Trafford Publishing, →ISBN, pages 68–69:

     He also had one of his employees toothcomb the journals for other mentions of 44-79731 and she was able to find several more entries, including a notation that it was picked up from the depot at Villacoublay by the 407^th FA Gp. in October of 1944.

   • 2014, Matthew James Dicken, Peace in Words: the First World War, 1914–1918‎^[3], [United Kingdom?]: Contemporary Simplicity Publishing, →ISBN:

     Curiously scouring, rummaging, searching … / Leaving no stone unturned. / Oddly seeking, hunting, sifting … / Shelves painstakingly toothcombed.

Alternative forms

• tooth-comb

Translations

to search thoroughly

• Bulgarian: претърсвам (bg) (pretǎrsvam)
• Portuguese: passar o pente fino

Etymology 2

The toothcomb of a ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta).

From tooth +‎ comb.

Noun

toothcomb (plural toothcombs)

1. (zoology) A comb-like dental structure found in the lower jaws of certain primates consisting of long, flat front teeth with microscopic grooves, which are used for grooming fur.
   • 1979, Frederick S. Szalay, Eric Delson, “Suborder Strepsirhini”, in Evolutionary History of the Primates, New York, N.Y., London: Academic Press, →ISBN, page 103, column 1:

     There is no reason to doubt that the tooth comb is homologous in all the lemuriforms. The term tooth comb has recently been replaced by Martin (1972) with the concept of "tooth scraper," and he has stated that, although most living species of strepsirhines use their tooth combs for grooming, this is a secondary function.

   • 1995, Robert A. Whitney, “Taxonomy”, in B. Taylor Bennett, Christian R. Abee, Roy Henrickson, editors, Nonhuman Primates in Biomedical Research: Biology and Management, San Diego, Calif., London: Academic Press, →ISBN, page 34, column 2:

     Anthropoids are characterized by having short faces, dry noses, and lacking prominent whiskers. [...] There is no toothcomb or sublingua, and the number of teeth varies from 36 in some platyrrhines to 32 in the catarrhines.

   • 2000, Friderun Ankel-Simons, “Teeth”, in Primate Anatomy: An Introduction, 2nd edition, San Diego, Calif., London: Academic Press, →ISBN, page 206:

     Members of the Prosimii, with the exception of Tarsius, have extremely specialized incisors. The lower incisors are tilted forward—they are then called procumbent—and are flattened laterally, forming a toothcomb. [...] The lower canine is frequently included in this toothcomb, and its morphology is assimilated to the shape of the procumbent incisors.

   • 2015, Susan Cachel, “The Eocene Primate Radiation”, in Fossil Primates (Cambridge Studies in Biological and Evolutionary Anthropology), Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 152:

     Must interest has centered on the first appearance of the prosimian tooth-comb or tooth-scraper [...]. The tooth-comb is formed by lower incisors and canines that are elongated and slender, and that form a procumbent unit in the anterior mandible. Upper incisors are lost, reduced, or moved to accommodate the tooth-comb.

   • 2020, Sergi López-Torres, Keegan R. Selig, Anne M. Burrows, Mary T. Silcox, “The Toothcomb of Karanisia clarki: Was this Species an Exudate-feeder?”, in K. A. I. Nekaris, Anne M. Burrows, editors, Evolution, Ecology and Conservation of Lorises and Pottos, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, New York, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press, →DOI, →ISBN, page 67:

     Toothcombs have evolved independently in various mammalian lineages, including primates, scandentians, and dermopterans, but the presence of a six-toothed toothcomb composed of four lower incisors and two canines (I₁, I₂ and C₁, bilaterally) is a distinct feature of extant strepsirrhine primates [...].

Alternative forms

• tooth comb
• tooth-comb

Translations

comb-like dental structure found in certain primates

Further reading

• toothcomb (zoology) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia