1965 Pacific Affairs 38 236 After the elections are over, however, Komeito tactics are somewhat more difficult to assess. To what use will Komeito put its new-found political muscle?

1976 Economist 25 Dec. 27/3 Players..might sue coaches for dropping them from the team, or otherwise use their new legal muscle in court.

1984 Guardian 5 Nov. 14/6 There could be a settlement in the Middle East if the USA and Europe would use their financial and political muscle to force Israel to behave more reasonably.

1990 Sunday Express Mag. 15 Apr. 42/1 The members have banded together simply to give them more marketing muscle.

1792 M. Wollstonecraft Vindic. Rights Woman iv. 121 So ludicrous..do these ceremonies appear to me that I scarcely am able to govern my muscles.

1894 W. S. Gilbert His Excellency i. 27 If fault or blunder visible I make in this experiment—Control your muscles risible, And check untimely merriment.

1843 E. A. Poe Tell-tale Heart in Pioneer Jan. 30/1 I kept quite still and said nothing. For another hour I did not move a muscle.

1872 ‘M. Twain’ Roughing It xxii. 170 We had plenty of blankets and were warm enough. We never moved a muscle all night, but waked at early dawn in the original positions.

1889 H. O'Reilly & J. Y. Nelson Fifty Years on Trail 322 I stayed quite still and never moved a muscle.

1902 J. Conrad Heart of Darkness ii, in Youth 128 He died without uttering a sound, without moving a limb, without twitching a muscle.

1950 G. B. Shaw Shakes versus Shav 135 Living actors have to learn that they too must be invisible while the protagonists are conversing, and therefore must not move a muscle nor change their expression.

1995 Church Times 1 Dec. 16/1 In our house we gawped at the television in rapt silence and hardly moved a muscle from beginning to end.

1859 G. W. Matsell Vocabulum 61 On the muscle, on the fight; a fighter; a pugilist... ‘The fellow travels on his muscle’, he presumes on his abilities to fight.

1861 in Civil War Times Illustr. (1972) Nov. 25 There are but few very sick men in the regiment, but a good many kind of run down, but will soon be on their muscle.

1874 J. H. Carter Log Commodore Rollingpin 43 He..dared him to come outside and fight... But all to no purpose. Wilks wasn't on his muscle.

1930 Amer. Mercury Dec. 457/1 On the muscle, angry, quarrelsome. ‘He busts up to me strictly on the muscle. So I let him have it.’

1975 S. J. Perelman Vinegar Puss 28 If they're on the muscle, you and your agency walk the plank.

1980 N.Y. Times 23 Mar. ii. 21 The worst thing you can do is get on your muscle... Just..say, ‘..Your talking is really spoiling the movie for me.’

1948 I. Shulman Cry Tough! 127 You know that this time it won't be on the muscle?

1952 ‘H. Grey’ Hoods xxxix. 299 They operated as we did, on the muscle.

1971 J. Brown & A. Groff Monkey off my Back 21 In the cases where we didn't [succeed in bribing the police], we would be forced to operate ‘on the muscle’.

1866 W. Odling Lect. Animal Chem. 113 Muscle-acids.

1900 G. C. Bourne in E. R. Lankester Treat. Zool. II. 11 The mesenteries are provided with well-developed retractor muscles, supported on folds or plaits of the mesogloea, which..form the so-called muscle banners.

1992 M. Stachowitsch Invertebr. 47/2 Muscle banner, retractor muscle.

1966 Chicago Tribune Mag. 20 Mar. 19/1 Gran Turismo Omologato. Our muscle car with all the would-be tigers in its wake.

1969 Business Week 11 Jan. 98 A new ‘muscle’ car, the Judge, will be unveiled this month by Pontiac. It's a pepped-up version of the jet-set GTO.

1974 Weekend Mag. (Montreal) 16 Mar. 2/1 The big Detroit muscle cars have been displaced by Vivas, MGBs and even Jeeps, and everywhere long hair for boys and short skirts for girls are right out of it.

1994 Guardian 4 June 39/5 The 110 series, a muscle car with gullwing doors and an aggressive mien.

1840 Philos. Trans. (Royal Soc.) 130 603 This cylinder or secondary muscle-cell..continues to grow like a simple cell; but only in its length, for in breadth it does not increase at all, but rather diminishes.

1877 T. H. Huxley Man. Anat. Invertebrated Animals xi. 642 In the Polymyaria, the muscles of the parietes of the body are divided into many series, each made up of many ‘muscle cells’.

1934 A. Forbes in C. Murchison Handbk. Exper. Psychol. iii. 175 When the receptive substance is excitatory the combination causes contraction of the muscle cell.

1990 Sci. News 22 Dec. 403/1 Injections of muscle cells showed some promise as a treatment for Duchenne's muscular dystrophy.

1872 T. H. Huxley Lessons Elem. Physiol. (ed. 6) vii. 159 Myosin (or muscle-clot as it is sometimes called).

1887 Jrnl. Physiol. 8 154 The muscle clot consists of myosin.

1842 W. Bowman in Todd's Cycl. Anat. & Physiol. III. 511/2 The elementary fibres always contain, among their primitive particles, a number of corpuscles, which either are, or are analogous to, the nuclei of the cells of development.]

1867 Quain's Elements Anat. (ed. 7) III. p. cxxi Nuclei or muscle-corpuscles.

1890 Q. Jrnl. Microsc. Sci. 31 75 The transverse portions of the muscle network are directly connected with the muscle-corpuscles.

1870 C. B. Radcliffe in Proc. Royal Soc. 19 23 Living nerve and muscle supply to the galvanometer currents, called respectively the nerve-current and the muscle-current.

1890 Amer. Naturalist 24 93 Observations with the capillary electrometer to determine the duration and law of disappearance of the muscle current.

1935 Proc. Royal Soc. B. 118 261 Electrodes are thrust into various muscles for the purpose of tapping the muscle currents.

1876 Proc. Royal Soc. 1875–6 24 446 The down stroke of the muscle curve took some space before it reached the abscissa.

1897 Science 12 Mar. 446/2 The influence of temperature on the form of the muscle curve.

1989 Canad. Jrnl. Physiol. & Pharmacol. 67 294 There was no antagonism of the papillary muscle curves to isoprenaline.

1997 H. G. Pope et al. in Psychosomatics 38 548 In the course of several ongoing studies, the authors have encountered men and women who display a form of body dysmorphic disorder in which they become pathologically preoccupied with their degree of muscularity. This condition, which the authors have tentatively termed ‘muscle dysmorphia’, may cause severe subjective distress, impaired social and occupational functioning, and abuse of anabolic steroids and other substances.

2001 Straits Times (Singapore) 8 Apr. p7 The most likely victims of muscle dysmorphia or reverse anorexia are men fuelled by the desire to be bulky.

1883 Science 28 Dec. 832/1 [In Diphyids] the ectoderm is a simple muscle-epithelium with well-developed muscle-fibrillae.

1993 Jrnl. Neurophysiol. 69 884/1 In the motor system of the jellyfish, Aglantha digitale, there are eight giant axons connected by chemical synapses to a muscle epithelium.

1887 W. James in Mind 12 201 Muscle-feeling belongs to that class of general sensations which tell us of our inner states.

1888 Science 27 Jan. 43/1 His writing shows that it was written as though writing in the dark, guided by the muscle-feelings of the hand alone.

1895 Mind New Ser. 4 8 A perception of more and less might everywhere, I presume, depend in some sense upon muscle-feeling.

1857 Blackwood's Edinb. Mag. June 684/1 On submitting it to the microscope, I found the muscle-fibres not at all disintegrated, the striæ being as perfect as in any other part.

1905 J. S. Ferguson Normal Histol. ix. 136 The bundle of intrafusal muscle fibres is again surrounded by a delicate axial sheath of connective tissue.

1991 Acta Neuropathologica 81 511/2 The sarcolemma of each muscle fiber was split or cracked.

1869 E. A. Parkes Man. Pract. Hygiene (ed. 3) i. v. 158 The nitrogenous aliments are blood-fibrine, muscle-fibrine or syntonin, myosin [etc.].

1881 St. G. Mivart Cat 125 About 15 per cent. of the remaining fourth [of the substance of muscle] is found, after death, to consist of an albuminoid substance called syntonin, or muscle fibrin.

1897 M. Mather Ruskin 91 He would use all this muscle-force [of men] ere he utilized the forces of nature.

2001 Hindu (Nexis) 13 Apr. How can a democracy allow this politics of violence, of imposing one's views on others through muscle force by inciting religious sentiment?

1874 Dunglison's Med. Lexicon (rev. ed.) Muscle Juice, a fluid surrounding the fibres of striated muscle and the fibre-cells of smooth muscles.

1887 Jrnl. Physiol. 8 176 A large quantity of muscle-juice was obtained by pounding finely divided muscle..with water.

1954 Science 4 June 813/1 Insulin was shown to increase the O₂ consumption of pigeon breast muscle brei in the presence of phosphate, citrate, and boiled muscle juice.

1953 Q. Rev. Biol. 28 165 The book's picture of a contracted muscle scarcely suggests a bulge on the outside—the muscle magazines do a better job!

2000 Record (Bergen County, New Jersey) (Electronic ed.) 29 Oct. I saw a big, pumped-up muscle guy standing in front of the rack with the muscle magazines.

1992 OutRage (Melbourne) Feb. 27/3 The sight of Simon necking with his muscle-mary pal, Phil, might give stimulus to an otherwise ho-hum evening in front of the telly.

2007 J. Clary Murder most Fab xxv. 252 Your job for the night is to pick up some Muscle Mary and go back to his place. We don't want you here for all the amateur dramatics later on.

1883 F. Galton Inq. Human Faculty 106 One favourite expedient was to associate the sight memory with the muscular memory.]

1892 Science 25 Nov. 302/1 In fighting we have an illustration of muscle-memory. A fistic encounter calls forth as diversified and complicated a series of activities as almost any species of manual labor.

1915 Nature 11 Mar. 39/1 Some authorities still believe that there is no getting past the assumption of a non-analysable sense of direction... Others again lay too heavy a burden on muscle-memory.

1991 Golf Monthly (BNC) Feb. Your mind can only focus attention on one area of the swing until it becomes muscle memory and works naturally.

1826 W. Kirby & W. Spence Introd. Entomol. III. xxxiv. 527 The Myoglyphides, or muscle-notches, are sinuses..in the posterior margin of the upper side of the head.

1882 Quain's Elements Anat. (ed. 9) II. 123 Muscle-nuclei or muscle-corpuscles.

1921 Proc. National Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 7 115 Only the muscle nuclei take the stain deeply, the nervous elements of the end-plates as well as the motor fibers remaining uncolored.

1996 Jrnl. Neurobiol. 29 535 The degeneration of muscle DEO1 involves the dismantling of its contractile apparatus followed by the degeneration of muscle nuclei.

1890 Cent. Dict. Muscle-plasm.

1874 F. M. Balfour in Q. Jrnl. Microsc. Sci. 14 350 Muscle-plates.

1882 Quain's Elements Anat. (ed. 9) II. 132 Most of the voluntary muscles of the body are developed from a series of portions of mesoderm..termed the muscle-plates.

1960 D. C. Braungart & R. Buddeke Introd. Animal Biol. (ed. 5) xv. 215 These myotomes..are made up of numerous muscle plates that are arranged longitudinally.

1992 Jrnl. Morphol. 212 213 Cranial muscles of gnathostome fishes are embryologically of somatic origin, originating from the mandibular, hyoid, branchial, epibranchial, and hypobranchial muscle plates.

1923 Proc. Royal Soc. B. 95 412 It is true without rigid isometry..with the muscle-pull quite close to the axis of the lever.

1974 Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio) 19 Oct. 3 d/1 Dave Sullivan, scheduled to start as a wide receiver, has a muscle pull and took it easy on Friday.

2000 Evening Standard (Electronic ed.) 11 Oct. Striker Paulo Wanchope is nursing a slight muscle pull and is doubtful for Costa Rica's World Cup qualifier.

1877 Pop. Sci. Monthly Feb. 465 The question whether it is possible for one to be a good muscle-reader and pretty uniformly successful, and yet not know just how the trick is done, must be answered in the affirmative.

1939 Sci. Monthly Aug. 171/2 Again and again ‘mind-readers’, or muscle-readers, have demonstrated that it is possible, by placing the hands on the head of some person who is informed as to the location of an object, and who is instructed to ‘think hard of where it is’, to be guided to it by muscle movement.

1877 Pop. Sci. Monthly Feb. 462 Although reasoning deductively from the known relations of mind to body, I had established conclusively to my own mind that the so-called mind-reading was really muscle-reading.

1909 O. Lodge Survival of Man ii. iii. 39 The thought-reading or rather muscle-reading exhibition[s], with actual or partial contact, which at one time were much in vogue.

1937 Internat. Jrnl. Ethics 47 491 Communication may be by means of..other factors such as sympathetic understanding, facial interpretation, perhaps muscle reading, or more generally, all instances often spoken of as ‘thought-transference’.

1881 I. Rosenthal Gen. Physiol. Muscles & Nerves xi. 194 In such a muscle-rhombus, the distribution of the tensions..is much more complex.

1889 Amer. Naturalist 23 985 The central muscle scars [in the brachiopod genus Obolella] diverge posteriorly.

1974 D. Webster & M. Webster Compar. Vertebr. Morphol. vii. 141 Faint ‘muscle scars’ on these fossil bones indicate some of the points of muscle attachment.

1879 Mind 4 164 The muscle-sense or feeling of innervation, which..is so largely instrumental in the work of objective perception [etc.].

1938 R. S. Woodworth Exper. Psychol. xix. 454 The traditional ‘sense of touch’ has been broken up by experiment into at least five senses. The first to be split off, early in the nineteenth century, was the muscle sense, kinesthesis.

1994 Neuroscience 60 551 Muscle spindles and Golgi tendon organs constitute the receptor foundation to the ‘muscle sense’.

1961 Britannica Bk. of Year 546/2 The only male fashion term to be noted is muscle shirt, a sleeveless T-shirt.

1980 Washington Post (Nexis) 17 Aug. k1 Gomez was always walking around in a muscle shirt, showing off.

1991 Esquire Jan. 24/2 Al Sharpton is thundering into a telephone, padding back and forth in black socks and a yellow muscle T-shirt.

1857 W. A. Miller Elements Chem. (1862) III. 783 Inosite, or Muscle Sugar.

1890 Science 11 Apr. 228/1 The carbohydrates..are represented by sugar and starch in the vegetable, and by liver-sugar, glycogen, and muscle-sugar, inosite, in the animal kingdom.

1917 Sci. Monthly Oct. 315 A 0.2 per cent. glucose beef infusion broth was made up, glucose being the chief muscle sugar.

1951 H. G. Fletcher et al. in Jrnl. Org. Chem. 16 1241 It is suggested that, since the substance [sc. meso-inositol] was first discovered in muscle..and was at one time called ‘muscle sugar’, it is better called myo-inositol.

1984 Listener 20 Dec. 59/4 Give them something very straight, and something slightly weird: ‘Hi, I'm Jane, I'm a nurse, and I'm into muscle-toning.’

1990 Amer. Health Nov. 20/4 The National Myotonology Register, a nonprofit organization that certifies muscle toning practitioners.

1874 R. J. Dunglison Dunglison's Med. Lexicon (rev. ed.) 677/1 Muscle tumor, myoma.

1951 Science 27 July 104/2 An increase in the value of ε in the muscle tumor.

1990 Sci. Amer. Oct. 30/1 Childhood cancers, including embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma (a muscle tumor) [etc.].

1704 J. Harris Lexicon Technicum I Muscle Vein. This Vein is Two-fold, the Superior and the Inferior. The Former arises from the Muscles of the Neck, and the Latter from the upper Muscles of the Breasts.

1876 Proc. Royal Soc. 25 440 Stimulation of the anterior crural nerve..caused a considerable outspurt of blood from the muscle-vein.

1934 Proc. Royal Soc. 1933–4 B. 114 223 Until recently, the blood flow through muscles was measured either by direct observation of the outflow of blood from a cut muscle-vein or with the help of various mechanical ‘Stromuhrs’.

1899 T. C. Allbutt et al. Syst. Med. VII. 460 Evidence of rapid muscle wasting.

1940 Science 14 June 10/2 When vitamin E..was added..her muscles were restored to nearly normal usefulness..and no sign of muscle wasting could be detected.

1990 Reader's Digest Aug. 138/2 Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a rare muscle-wasting disease almost unknown in girls.

c1802–19 in J. Holloway & J. Black Later Eng. Broadside Ballads (1975) II. 310 A secret soon came out, A rival he came in, Who muscles cried about And muscled me—don't grin.

1929 Chicago Tribune 18 Jan. 21/4 A certain gentleman in the illicit spirits business was accosted by two sinister characters, who ‘muscled’ him,..removing from his wallet the sum of $150.

1935 C. F. Coe G-Man viii. 142 Mebbe it's a new mob. If they're musclin' Rap, it won't be long before they're musclin' us too.

1971 N.Y. Law Jrnl. 23 Nov. 4/2 Big brewers may be illegally muscling small ones through predatory pricing—that is deliberately using below-cost pricing methods to force competitors out of the market.

1987 R. Berthoud Life Henry Moore xvi. 321 Caro and King told Moore that Bernard Cohen had been the chief instigator of the letter: he had muscled them into it.

1993 Harper's Mag. Nov. 54/1 They seem to become pals with the C.I.'s. Sometimes, however, they have to muscle the guy.

1928 Wisconsin News 26 Nov. 19 Panning the mugg who ‘muscles in’ on the boss each day as he goes to chow.

1929 W. R. Burnett Little Caesar v. iii. 171 If you think you can muscle into this joint you're off your nut.

1932 P. G. Wodehouse Hot Water vi. 123 You muscle in here, pretending to be the Vicomte de Blissac.

1932 Observer 26 June 13/3 I began to feel that he could probably beat Lindrum at billiards and muscle in on Al Capone.

1942 E. Waugh Put out More Flags iii. 162 You're muscling in on my territory.

1973 J. Wainwright Devil you Don't 30 ‘The Ponderosa’ was his spread and no cheap, jumped-up, fiddle-foot was gonna muscle in.

1990 Sunday Mail (Brisbane) 14 Oct. 75/9 Toyota's upmarket Lexus has muscled into the $100,000-plus territory once reserved for the likes of Mercedes, BMW and Jaguar.