a. (sb.) [ad. L. canīnus, f. canis dog; cf. F. canin, 16th c.]
A. adj.
1. Of, belonging to, or characteristic of, a dog; having the nature or qualities of a dog.
1623. Cockeram, Canine, doggish.
1664. H. More, Myst. Iniq., Apol. 551. That Canine eloquence must needs sound harsh to their ears.
1735. Somerville, Chase, IV. 335. As the Dog … Raving he foams, and howls, and barks, and bites … His Nature, and his Actions all Canine.
1870. L’Estrange, Miss Mitford, I. iv. 101. Greyhounds, the most graceful and the most attached of all the canine race.
b. of appetite, hunger, etc.: Voracious, greedy, as that of a dog. Canine appetite, hunger: the disease BULIMY. Canine madness: hydrophobia.
1613. R. C., Table Alph. (ed. 3), Canine, dogge-hungry.
1648. Hunting of Fox, 21. The Sectaries have canine Appetites.
1750. Johnson, Rambl., No. 6, ¶ 6. The dreadful symptom of canine madness.
1804. Med. Jrnl., XII. 391. Characteristic marks of canine madness.
1818. T. Jefferson, Writ. (1830), IV. 308. A canine appetite for reading.
2. Canine tooth: one of the four strong pointed teeth, situated one on each side of the upper and lower jaw, between the incisors and the molars; a cuspidate tooth. (In some animals the canine teeth are immensely developed and become tusks.)
[1398. Trevisa, Barth. De P. R., V. xx. (1495), 124. Houndes wyth the sayd teeth that hyghte Canini gnawe bones.]
1607. Topsell, Four-f. Beasts, 113. They whose teeth hang over their canine teeth, are also adjudged railers.
1626. Bacon, Sylva, § 752. The Teeth are in Men of three kinds, Sharp, as the Fore-teeth; Broad, as the … Molar-teeth, or Grinders; and Pointed-teeth, or Canine, which are between both.
1836. Todd, Cycl. Anat., I. 478/1. The canine teeth [of the Carnivora] are … preeminently strong, long and sharp.
3. Anat. & Phys. Canine fossa: a depression in the upper jaw-bone behind the canine prominence. Canine laugh: the expression of the face in sneering (so called because similar to that of a dog’s face in snarling), risus sardonicus. Canine muscle: the levator anguli oris, which in the dog raises the corner of the mouth in snarling. Canine prominence or ridge: a ridge on the upper jaw-bone caused by the fang of the canine tooth.
1836–9. Todd, Cycl. Anat., I. 223/1. From the inner part of the canine fossa. Ibid., 207/2. The canine ridge, which corresponds to the socket of the canine tooth.
B. sb. = Canine tooth (see 2). Also in comb., as canine-shaped adj.
1835. Swainson, Nat. Hist. Quadrupeds, § 71 (L.). The more perfect quadrupeds have three sorts of teeth, termed incisors, canines, and molars.
1870. Rolleston, Anim. Life, 7. The absence of canines is characteristic of the order.
¶ Jocosely used for ‘dog.’
1869. E. Farmer, Scrap Book (ed. 6), 61. As though ‘Hullah’ had tutored each canine to sing.
1886. Pall Mall Gaz., 3 April, 13/2. A better-favoured canine was sacrificed to the god of health.
