hand-nail

hand-nail (plural hand-nails)

1. Alternative form of handnail
   • 1772 May 7, The South-Carolina Gazette‎, number 1890:

     The workmen opened the lead, and to their great ſurprize, found the fleſh, hair, and toe and hand-nails, as perfect and ſound as though he had been dead hut ſix hours.

   • 1842 November 12, The Daily Madisonian‎, volume I, number 282, Washington, D.C.:

     From this branch of the fine arts has sprung the Ongleur, who, for 25 francs per month, undertakes to render your hand-nails perfect, to reduce them to the true filbert shape, and to polish them bright as amber, by means of an instrument duly sold, at a high price, under a “brevet d’ invention.”

   • 1880 May 3, “Echoes for the Fireside”, in The Liverpool Echo. An Evening Newspaper for Lancashire, Cheshire, and North Wales., number 161, page 3:

     Shortly after the attack it was observed that there was a groove on all the nails, both of the hands and the feet, neither the patient nor those about him having ever heard previously of such an occurrence. The foot-marks disappeared first, but the lines on the hand-nails were not cut away until nine months had elapsed.