spine's

The Vatican Library was a frequent haunt of mine, and since I had been going there for so many years, even the rotation of the Swiss guards in their seemingly ridiculous uniforms who checked my documentation came to know me, each in their turn, a face plucked from the indistinct sea of greying scholarly types all eager to plunder some obscure text, to worship at the spine's edge of the Codex Borgia.

Excerpt from Codex Infinitum Kane X. Faucher 2010

"Once you back away," said King, "then you say, 'Well, I was wrong once, but I'm not any more, I got a little political heat,' it implies that your spine's not as strong as people thought it was."

Steve King: GOP may not win House 2010

I'm still sick as a dog, there's no way I'd survive even a half-hour car trip right now, and my spine's gone wonky again.

jaxraven Diary Entry jaxraven 2007

Leonoa had survived by a blade-thin chance, and even so, she lay four days in a stupor, waking for an evening before lapsing into bone fever, its delirious contortions permanently thwarting her spine's straightness, lengthening one arm and legs, and throwing the plates of her skull awry, gnarling her like a knotgrass doll.

Cat Rambo catrambo 2007

Update: Thanks to spine's comment in Dohiyi Mir, I read this in Talking Points Memo.

December 2003 2003

The spine's dark, you don't notice it right away, but it would show up in a search.

The Burglar On The Prowl Block, Lawrence 2004

Then calling it, a hundred killer bolts at once, and streaking down out of the sky with the fire a spine's length away from her tail, diving, falling like a stone out of the heavens and down, into a narrow cleft just wide enough for her to drop through it, lined on all sides with carefully placed jewels, gems that the lightning would tune and charge-

The Elvenbane Lackey, Mercedes 1991

"The lad's neck is broken, and his spine's fractured," he said in a low voice.

The Borough Treasurer 1899

Some one take me up, and launch me, spine-wise, on the sea, -- for by live-oaks! my spine's a keel.

Great Sea Stories Various 1897

Some one take me up, and launch me, spine-wise, on the sea, -- for by live-oaks! my spine's a keel.

Moby Dick, or, the whale Herman Melville 1855