[f. TUSK sb.1]
† 1. trans. The technical expression for: To carve (a barbel). Obs.
Perh. suggested by the tusk-like appearance of the two pairs of cirri depending from the upper jaw.
1486. Bk. St. Albans, F vij b. A Barbill tuskyd.
1513. Bk. Keruynge, in Babees Bk. (1868), 265. Tuske that barbell.
[1787. Best, Angling (ed. 2), 169. Tusk a barbel, cut him up.
1853. Fraser’s Mag., XLVIII. 694. The reader will remember when he puts the slice into a fish, that he gobbets trout, truncheons eel, fins chub, tusks barbel (etc.).]
2. intr. † a. ? To show the teeth. Obs.
1614. B. Jonson, Bart. Fair, II. iii. Vapours? Neuer tuske, nor twirle your dibble…. You shall not fright me with your Lyon-chap, Sir, nor your tuskes. Ibid. (1616), Epigr., cvii. Nay, now you puffe, tuske, and draw vp your chin, Twirle the poore chain you run a feasting in.
b. To use, or thrust with, the tusks; of a horse, to pull roughly with the teeth at.
1825. Jamieson, To Tusk at, to pluck or pull roughly; as when a horse tears hay from a stack, Fife.
1893. Kipling, Many Invent., 204. They were rooting and tusking among the young Sal.
3. trans. To root or dig up, or to tear off with the tusks; to wound with the tusk.
1629. Dekker, Londons Tempe, Wks. 1873, IV. 120. I could (to swell my trayne) beckon the Rhine, But the wilde boare has tusked up his vine).
1818. Keats, Endym., II. 474. My poor mistress went … mad, When the boar tusked him.
1909. Stacpoole, Pools of Silence, xvii. A tree … showed half its bark ripped off, tusked off by some old bull elephant. Ibid., xix. The screams of men trodden under foot or tusked to pieces.
4. To furnish with tusks; to project from or adorn like tusks.
1896. Kipling, Seven Seas, Merchantmen. We’ve ratched beyond the Crossets That tusk the Southern Pole.
