[f. CORK sb.1 + SCREW.]
1. An instrument for drawing corks from bottles, consisting of a steel screw or helix with a sharp point and a transverse handle.
1720. Amherst, Poems, Bottle Screw. This hand a corkscrew did contain, And that a bottle of champaigne.
1814. Scott, Wav., lxvi. The landlord’s cork-screw was just introduced into the muzzle of a pint bottle of claret.
1875. Darwin, Insectiv. Pl., iii. 52. With their tentacles twisted about,… the longer ones like corkscrews.
b. Short for corkscrew curl: see 2.
1883. G. H. Boughton, in Harper’s Mag., Feb., 402/1. These are no small mincing, bandolined ‘corkscrews,’ but a goodly sized, loosely twisted tress of gleaming hair.
c. Short for corkscrew twill: see 2.
1887. Ld. Macnaghten, in Law Rep., App. Cases XII. 295. The goods … belong to a class of wearing material known in the trade as ‘corkscrews.’
2. attrib. Resembling a corkscrew; spirally twisted; esp. of curls or ringlets, and of staircases.
1830. Lindley, Nat. Syst. Bot., 285. Their leaves have … a uniform spiral arrangement … so as to give the stem a sort of corkscrew appearance.
1839. Thackeray, Major Gahagan, iii. Little corkscrew ringlets.
1842. Tennyson, Walk to Mail, 82. Up the cork-screw stair.
1887. Ld. Selborne, in Law Rep., App. Cases XII. 28. In all goods of the class called ‘corkscrew twills’ the weft lies hidden inside, the surface on both sides being warp.
3. Comb., as corkscrew-like adj.
1882. Vines, Sachs’ Bot., 443. The corkscrew-like antherozoid, which is coiled 12 or 13 times.
