1751. Smollett, Peregrine Pickle, ch. xlv. Like a dried walnut between the grinders of a Templar in the pit.
1817. Scott, Ivanhoe, c. 16. None who beheld thy grinders contending with these peas.
1819. Moore, Tom Crib, p. 23. With grinders dislodg’d, and with peepers both poach’d.
1834. Ainsworth, Rookwood, bk. iv., ch. i. A grinder having been dislodged, his pipe took possession of the aperture.
1836. M. Scott, Cruise of the Midge, p. 83. Every now and then he would clap his head sideways on the ground, so as to get the back grinders to bear on his prey.
1848. Thackeray, Book of Snobs, ch. xiii. Sir Robert Peel, though he wished it ever so much, has no power over Mr. Benjamin Disraeli’s grinders, or any means of violently handling that gentleman’s jaw.
1871. Chambers’ Jour., 9 Dec., p. 772. My grinders is good enough for all the wittels I gets.
1888. Sporting Life, 28 Nov. Countered heavily on the grinders.
To take a grinder, verb. phr. (common).—To apply the left thumb to the nose, and revolve the right hand round it, as if to work a hand-organ or coffee-mill; to take a sight (q.v.); to work the coffee-mill (q.v.). [A street boy’s retort on an attempt to impose on his good faith or credulity.]
1836. Dickens, Pickwick, ch. xxxi. Here Mr. Jackson smiled once more upon the company; and, applying his left thumb to the tip of his nose, worked a visionary coffee-mill with his right hand, thereby performing a very graceful piece of pantomime (then much in vogue, but now, unhappily, almost obsolete) which was familiarly denominated taking a grinder.