fescue

plural fescues

1. countableA straw, wire, stick, etc., used chiefly to point out letters to children when learning to read.

   to come under the fescue of an imprimatur

   1644, John Milton, Areopagitica; a Speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc’d Printing, to the Parlament of England, London: [s.n.], →OCLC

   1 more example

   ‘Now then,’ Mason rapping upon the Table’s Edge with a sinister-looking Fescue of Ebony, whose List of Uses simple Indication does not quite exhaust, whilst the Girls squirm pleasingly

   1997, Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon

2. countableuncountableA hardy grass commonly used to border golf fairways in temperate climates, of the genus Festuca.
3. countableAn instrument for playing on the harp; a plectrum.

   with thy golden fescue play'dst upon Thy hollow harp

   c. 1610s, Homer (attributed), translated by George Chapman, The Crowne of all Homers Workes: Batrachomyomachia, or the Battaile of Frogs and Mise […], published 1624

4. countableThe style of a sundial.

present singular third person fescues · participle present fescuing · participle past fescued · past fescued

1. To use a fescue, or teach with a fescue.

   1 more example

   A minister that cannot be trusted to pray in his own words without being chewed to, and fescued to a formal injunction of his rote lesson, should as little be trusted to preach, besides the vain babble of praying over the same things immediately again ; for there is a large difference in the repetition of some pathetical ejaculation raised out of the sudden earnestness and vigour of the inflamed soul, (such as was that of Christ in the garden,) from the continual rehearsal of our daily orisons;

   1641, John Milton, Animadversions upon The Remonstrants Defence Against Smectymnuus