pinfold

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Oaths were not purpos'd more than law, To keep the good and just in awe, But to confine the bad and sinful, Like moral cattle, in a pinfold.

From Hudibras by Butler, Samuel

With shrilling bleat for comfort hie To every pinfold, humankind; Ah, there the fostering teat is dry, The stranger mother proves unkind.

From The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume I. The Songs of Scotland of the past half century by Rogers, Charles

Why, they must have been fairly starved on purpose; nay, they must have been in the pinfold all the time he had been laid up.

From Stories of Comedy by Johnson, Rossiter

For then she must think of the cow’s fodder and of the herdsman’s hire, flatter the heyward, defend herself when her cattle is shut up in the pinfold and moreover pay the damage.

From Medieval English Nunneries c. 1275 to 1535 by Power, Eileen

Its earlier meaning is to hamper or entangle— "Confined and pestered in this pinfold here."

From The Romance of Words (4th ed.) by Weekley, Ernest