Balling-iron
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A piece of shaped metal that forces the mouth of an animal to stay open.
"After a due examination of the mouth has been made, and we have selected the tooth to be operated upon, the animal should be restrained by means of a twitch, and a balling-iron ought then to be placed in the mouth . The common open balling-iron will answer the purpose, but the one I would recommend you to use is that invented by Mr. Varnell ."
Example
More examples"After a due examination of the mouth has been made, and we have selected the tooth to be operated upon, the animal should be restrained by means of a twitch, and a balling-iron ought then to be placed in the mouth . The common open balling-iron will answer the purpose, but the one I would recommend you to use is that invented by Mr. Varnell ."
Etymology
Named for its original use in forcing open the mouth of an animal for balling.
More for "balling-iron"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.