subs. (printers’).—In pl. = a pair of bandy legs.
WOODEN PARENTHESIS, subs. phr. (old).—A pillory.—GROSE (1785).
TO HAVE ONE’S NOSE (or BOWSPRIT) IN PARENTHESIS, verb. phr. (old).—To have it pulled.—GROSE (1785). Also see quot.
1823. BADCOCK (‘Jon Bee’), Dictionary of the Turf, etc., s.v. PARENTHESIS (a)—it is this thing, itself ( ); and when a man’s nose, or any prominent part of him, may get irrevocably between the thing—he is in a bad way: some few novices have died of it.
