[f. BRIDLE v.]
1. The applying of a bridle; curbing, restraining, controlling † Bridling cast: a stirrup glass.
c. 1450. Chaucer’s Dreme, 272. The bridling hire hors.
1513. More, Rich. III. (1641), 220. The brideling and punishing of such as there had misgoverned themselves.
1609. Beaum. & Fl., Scornf. Lady, II. 69. Let’s have a bridling cast before you go. Fill ’s a new stoupe.
1684. trans. Bonet’s Merc. Compit., III. 94. The bridling the fury of the humours.
1817. G. S. Faber, Eight Dissert. (1845), II. 283. For the purpose of bridling the apprehended refractoriness of subjects.
1833. Regul. Instr. Cavalry, I. 42. Bridling, the Bridoon touching the corners of the mouth.
2. The forming of a ‘bridle’ to a net.
c. 1838. C. Bathurst, Nets, 34. Bridling is done … on a spool a full quarter less in circumference than the one used in the body of the net.
3. The gesture mentioned in BRIDLE v. 3.
1709. Tatler, No. 104, ¶ 1. By her bridling-up I perceived that she expected to be treated hereafter not as Jenny Distaff.
1861. Mrs. Delaney’s Corr., II. 485, note. One of the first lessons in deportment … was to hold up the head on entering a room, and to keep the chin in, which is expressed by ‘bridling.’
1851. Helps, Comp. Solit., vii. (1874), 122. Without any bridling-up or nonsense of any kind.
