hand-nail

plural hand-nails

1. alternativeAlternative form of handnail.

   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.

   1772 May 7, The South-Carolina Gazette, number 1890

   2 more examples

   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.”

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

   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.

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