[An alteration of the older locked jaw: see LOCKED ppl. a.] Popular name for trismus, or tonic spasm of the muscles of mastication, causing the jaws to remain rigidly closed; a variety of tetanus. ‘Also extended so as to mean Tetanus’ (Syd. Soc. Lex.).
1803. Med. Jrnl., IX. 316. One girl … died of lock jaw.
1866. A. Flint, Princ. Med. (1880), 841. The jaws are firmly shut by the rigid contraction of the muscles, and hence the affection is known as lock-jaw.
1874. Carpenter, Ment. Phys., I. ii. § 74 (1879), 78. Tetanus (commonly known as ‘lock-jaw’).
Hence Lock-jawed ppl. a., having the jaws fixed; fig. unable to speak.
1801. J. Brown, in Naval Chron., VII. 153. We were lock-jaw’d.
1809. Malkin, Gil Blas, XI. v. ¶ 7. On this theme you may expatiate till the populace become lock-jawed with astonishment.
1826. J. Wilson, Noct. Ambr., Wks. 1855, I. 210. I burst out into such a torrent of indignant eloquence that the Slaves and Tyrants were all tongue-tied and lock-jawed before me.
