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Dictionary of Phrase and Fable—T

Ten Commandments

(The). The following rhyme was written under the two tables of the commandments:

PRSVR Y PRFCT MN
VR KP THS PRCPTS TN.
The vowel E
Supplies the key.
Ten Commandments

(The). Scratching the face with the ten fingers of an angry woman; or a blow with the two fists of an angry man, in which the “ten commandments are summarised into two.”

Could I come near your beauty with my nails,
I'd set my ten commandments in your face.

Shakespeare: 2 Henry VI., i. 3.

“ `I daur you to touch him,' spreading abroad her long and muscular fingers, garnished with claws, which a vulture might have envied. `Ill set my ten commandments on the face of the first loop that lays a finger on him.” —Sir W. Scott: Waverley, chap. xxx.

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
Tench
Ten
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