kibe

Updated: June 5, 2025

Hamlet says, in the scene with the gravedigger, "By the Lord, Horatio, these three years I have taken note of it: the age is grown so picked that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe." And Lorenzo, in the Merchant of Venice, alluding to Launcelot: O dear discretion, how his words are suited!

- The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 04 : Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English. in Twenty Volumes

But the coalheaver always sticks close to the attire of his station; he alone wears the consistent and befitting garb of his forefathers; he alone has not discarded "the napless vesture of humility," to follow the always expensive, and often absurd fashions of his superiors. All ungalled of him is each courtier's heel or great man's kibe.

Various - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction : Volume 10, No. 280, October 27, 1827

He had a pride in his promptness with copy, and you could always trust his promise. The printer's toe never galled the author's kibe in his case; he wished to have an early proof, which he corrected fastidiously, but not overmuch, and he did not keep it long.

William Dean Howells - Oliver Wendell Holmes (from Literary Friends and Acquaintance)

Gilbert Glossin, in my time, sir, the use of swords and pistols, and such honourable arms, was reserved by the nobility and gentry to themselves, and the disputes of the vulgar were decided by the weapons which nature had given them, or by cudgels cut, broken, or hewed out of the next wood. But now, sir, the clouted shoe of the peasant galls the kibe of the courtier.

Sir Walter Scott - Guy Mannering, Or, the Astrologer — Complete

Hamlet says, in the scene with the Gravedigger, "By the Lord, Horatio, these three years I have taken note of it: the age is grown so picked, that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe." And Lorenzo, in the Merchant of Venice, alluding to Launcelot: O dear discretion, how his words are suited!

August Wilhelm Schlegel - Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature

I have lost excellent clients, I have never understood why; yet I respect the remains of their literature, I study their language, I attend their gatherings and subscribe the expenses; I consume Welsh mutton with relish; I enjoy the Triads, and can come down on them with a quotation from Catwg the Wise: but it so chanced that I trod on a kibe, and I had to pay the penalty.

George Meredith - Celt and Saxon — Complete