Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Scissors, generally with curved blades, designed to be used in cutting the finger-nails.

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word nail-scissors.

Examples

  • The following suggestions are less cinematically apocalyptic, but still better than a home that can be forcibly entered with a pair of nail-scissors:

    Ned Goldreyer: A Tale of Tent Cities 2009

  • Asking "how can we keep sharps off airplanes" leads to confiscation of nail-scissors; while asking "how can we keep terrorists from overpowering pilots" leads to reinforced cockpit doors.

    Boing Boing: September 21, 2003 - September 27, 2003 Archives 2003

  • The first-person saga of a man who fixed his own botched circumcision while at college, using a nail-scissors and ice-cubes.

    Boing Boing: March 18, 2001 - March 24, 2001 Archives 2001

  • Whenever a fowl is killed -- and I came upon Jack slowly putting one to death the other day with a pair of nail-scissors -- he possesses himself of a small store of feathers, which he wears tastefully placed over his left ear.

    Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 17, No. 100, April, 1876 Various

  • Some men used nail-scissors, and it was found that a 'one hour day' was ample to ensure a good 'return.'

    The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry Geoffrey Keith Rose

  • By wiggling it gently, she had discovered, you could slip this tile right out and put it back again; and once, on their last day, she had dug a hole in the plaster behind it with her nurse's nail-scissors and hidden a new farthing, in order to have some buried treasure to look for the next time they came.

    Mrs. Miniver 1939

  • So, after I had cut with nail-scissors the few fair hairs from my breast and calves, in an endeavour to encourage a plentiful crop like that which added manliness to Pennybet's darker form -- after this delicate, operation, I got between the sheets, and straightened out my limbs with a considerable effort of the will.

    Tell England A Study in a Generation Ernest Raymond 1931

  • "Oh, I jabbed him in the eye with a pair of nail-scissors, and he went away!" said Jane Hubbard.

    The Girl on the Boat 1928

  • She had insulted her husband before guests and servants, had scratched his face, thrown hand-mirrors and hairbrushes and nail-scissors at him often enough, but she knew that Fred was hardly the fellow who would go into court and offer that sort of evidence.

    The song of the lark 1915

  • It is but the tooth-brush and nail-scissors that we flourish.

    Yet Again Max Beerbohm 1914

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.