flesh one's maiden sword

present singular third person fleshes one's maiden sword · participle present fleshing one's maiden sword · participle past fleshed one's maiden sword · past fleshed one's maiden sword

1. datedidiomaticTo experience or succeed in combat or struggle for the first time, as in the military or in politics.

   Come brother Iohn, full brauely hast thou flesht / Thy mayden sword.

   c. 1597 (date written), [William Shakespeare], The History of Henrie the Fourth; […], quarto edition, London: […] P[eter] S[hort] for Andrew Wise, […], published 1598, →OCLC, [Act V, scene iv]

   3 more examples

   Well, Lord Althorpe has last night fleshed his maiden sword as a finance minister—and the result, I am sorry to say, is a failure.

   1831, “Speakers and Speeches in Parliament, No. IV”, in The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal, volume 31, page 222

   Day after day, and year after year, we have heard the Native question discussed in an intelligible and statesmanlike manner, when the subject was brought forward in a practicable form, but not when presented in the style of a young member of a debating society endeavouring to “flesh his maiden sword.”

   1869 July 22, William Fox, New Zealand. Parliamentary Debates: Fourth Session of the Fourth Parliament. Legislative Council and House of Representatives, volume 6, published 1869, page 79

   The Ragged Guardists, when they did flesh their maiden swords on the 12th, could do nothing more spectacular than kidnap three Czech soldiers from Csap railway station.

   1956, Carlile Aylmer Macartney, October Fifteenth: A History of Modern Hungary, 1929–1945, volume 1, page 286