The unerring dart of Procris. Diana gave Procris a dart which never missed its aim, and after being discharged returned back to the shooter.
Procrus´tes (3 syl.), a highwayman of Attica, who used to place travellers on a bed; if they were too short he stretched them out till they fitted it, if too long he lopped off the redundant part. Greek Mythology.
Critic, more cruel than Procrustes old,
Who to his iron bed by torture fits
Their nobler parts, the souls of suffering wits.
Mallet, Verbal Criticism (1734).
Proctor’s Dogs or Bull-Dogs, the two “runners” or officials who accompany a university proctor in his rounds, to give chase to recalcitrant gownsmen.
And he had breathed the proctor’s dogs [was a member of Oxford or Cambridge University].
Tennyson, prologue of The Princess (1830).
Prodigal (The), Albert VI. duke of Austria (1418, 1439-1463).
Prodigy of France (The). Guillaume Budé was so called by Erasmus (1467-1540).
Prodigy of Learning (The). Samuel Hahnemann, the German, was so called by J. P. Richter (1755-1843).
Professor (The). The most important member of the party gathered about the social board in O. W. Holmes’s Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1858).
Profound (The), Richard Middleton, an English scholastic divine (*-1304).