Pins at one time used by ladies to keep curls on the forehead fixed and in trim.
E. Cobam Brewer. Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1894)
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a large pin, probably from fastening the hair to a pad of cork;
Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary (1908)
► uses
Uses:
by the luckiest chance in the world, I had not been stopped by a corking-pin that stuck in the good gentlewoman’s stomacher; the head of the pin passing between my shirt and the waistband of my breeches, and thus I was held by the middle in the air, till Glumdalclitch ran to my relief.
Jonathan Swift. Gulliver's Travels Into Several Remote Regions of the World (1726)
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“What wonder is it if Roland was so good a knight and so valiant as everyone says he was, when, after all, he was enchanted, and nobody could kill him save by thrusting a corking pin into the sole of his foot, and he always wore shoes with seven iron soles?