TO GIVE (DESERVE, WIN, LIE FOR, etc.) THE WHETSTONE, verb. phr. (old).To give (get, or compete for) the prize for lying: a WHETSTONE, i.e., a wit-sharpener, regarded as a satirical premium for what nowadays would be called naked (or monumental) lying. [NARES: There were, in some places, jocular games, in which the prize given for the greatest lie was a WHETSTONE. HALLIWELL: The liar was sometimes publicly exhibited with the whetstone fastened to him.]
[?]. BULLEYN, Prose Morality [WALDRON, The Sad Shepherd, 162. 220]. My name is Mendax, a younger brother, linially descended of an auncient house, before the Conquest. We geve three WHETSTONES in Gules, with no difference.
1570. ASCHAM, The Scholemaster, 26. I assure you there is no such WHETSTONE to sharpen a good witte and encourage a will to learnynge as is praise.
1580. J. LYLY, Euphues and His England, C. 4. If I met with one of Crete, I was readie to LIE with him FOR THE WHETSTONE.
1580. T. LUPTON, Sivqila; too Good to be True, 80. Lying with us is so loved and allowed, that there are many tymes gamings and prizes therefore purposely, to encourage one to outlye another. O. And what shall he gaine that gets the victorie in lying? S. He shall have a silver WHETSTONE for his labour.
1591. HARINGTON, Ariosto, xviii. 36.
Well might Martano beare away the bell, | |
Or else a WHETSTONE challenge for his dew, | |
That on the sodaine such a tale could tell, | |
And not a word of all his tale was trew. |
1592. G. HARVEY, Four Letters. If Mother Hubbard, in the vein of Chaucer, happened to tell one canicular tale, father Elderton and his son Greene, in the vein of Skelton or Scoggin, will counterfeit a hundred dogged fables, libels, calumnies, slanders, LIES FOR THE WHETSTONE, what not.
1599. JOSEPH HALL, Satires, iv. 6.
The brain-sick youth, that feeds his tickled ear | |
With sweet-saucd lies of some false traveller, | |
Which hath the Spanish Decades read awhile, | |
Or WHET-STONE leasings of old Maundeville. |
1600. JONSON, Cynthias Revels, i. 5. Cri. Cos? how happily hath Fortune furnishd him with a WHETSTONE. Ibid. (1614), Bartholomew Fair, i. Good Lord! how sharp you are, with being at Bedlam yesterday! WHETSTONE has set an edge upon you.
c. 1603. BACON [Z. GREY, Hudibras, Note to II. i. 5. 60]. [NARES: Sir K. Digby boasted before King James of having seen the philosophers stone in his travels, but was puzzled to describe it, when Sir Francis Bacon interrupted him, saying, Perhaps it was a WHETSTONE.]
d. 1635. RANDOLPH, Works, 330. I thought it not the worst traffique to sell WHETSTONES. This WHETSTONE [he continues] will set such an edge upon your inventions, that it will make your rusty iron brains purer metal than your brazen faces. Whet but the knife of your capacities on this WHETSTONE, and you may presume to dine at the Muses Ordinarie, or sup at the Oracle of Apollo.
1792. J. PALMER (Budworth), A Fortnights Ramble to the Lakes, vi., note. It is a custom in the North, when a man tells the greatest lie in company to reward him with a WHETSTONE, which is called LYING FOR A WHETSTONE.
d. 1822. SHELLEY, To his Genius.
Let them read Shakespeares sonnets, taking thence | |
A WHETSTONE for their dull intelligence. |