1670 L. Meager Eng. Gardener 28 You may be sure to find them by gently opening the young leaves, with a needle or pin point.

1737 H. Bracken Farriery Improved 228 The Tunica Cornea or outward Part of the Eye is..full of Small wounds or Ulcers like so many Pin-Points.

1779 W. Cullen First Lines Pract. Physic II. 101 The heat of the body..produces profuse sweating, preceded..with a sense of pricking, as of pin points in the skin.

1828 M. R. Mitford Rienzi ii. i. 22 The supple touch Of pliant interest, or the dust of time, Or the pin-point of temper, loose, or rot, Or snap love's silken band.

1839 A. Ure Dict. Arts 922 Paper-hangings.—Printing. Each block carries small pin points fixed at its corners to guide the workman in the insertion of the figure exactly in its place.

1879 I. L. Bird Lady's Life Rocky Mts. 267 Snow as stinging as pinpoints beating on my hand.

1931 C. Day Lewis From Feathers to Iron xii. 25 Nightmare nags at his elbow and narrows Horizon to pinpoint, hope to hand's breadth.

1991 Lighting Dimensions Nov. 34/2 (advt.) A small pinpoint that's easily focused and controlled.

1927 Times 19 Nov. 11/3 The test consisted of finding and dropping messages upon four selected ‘pin points’, not easy to find, on a 100-mile course over Suffolk and Norfolk.

1940 Times 29 Aug. 4/3 We came out about 15 miles north of the target, managed to get a good ‘pinpoint’, and then turned and flew south.

1970 S. E. T. Taylor & H. A. Parmar Ground Stud. for Pilots ii. 14 We pass over Peterborough..at 1230 hrs precisely. Plot the position, as a small circled dot; it is a Pinpoint, the name given to a Fix obtained by visual observation of the ground.

1983 J. D. Harvey Tumbling Mirth (1986) 92 He had just crossed a coastline. He used this as a pinpoint by estimating where he had crossed the coast.

1943 H. T. U. Smith Aerial Photographs xiii. 339 Vertical photography may involve the making of one or more flight strips, or of only isolated stereo pairs, known as ‘pinpoints’.

1948 S. H. Spurr Aerial Photographs in Forestry ii. 16 Specially designed instruments manufactured by the makers of mapping cameras are particularly well adapted for taking pin-points.

2002 Best of Brit. Nov. 29/1 541 Squadron..performed high altitude reconnaissance over the European theatre from early 1944 to the end of the war, preparing pinpoint photos of targets.

1807 R. Tannahill Soldier's Return 41 Ae pridefu' elf, amang the rest, Wha's pin-point heart bumpt 'gainst his breast.

1850 R. Browning Christmas-eve v. 18 Man, therefore, stands on his own stock Of love and power as a pin-point rock.

1899 T. C. Allbutt et al. Syst. Med. VII. 114 The pupils..so small as to deserve the name of ‘pin-point pupils’.

1907 J. H. Parsons Dis. Eye iv. 67 In old people it is smaller than in the young, sometimes to so great an extent that the pupils are almost ‘pin-point’.

1933 W. de la Mare Fleeting & Other Poems 95 With pin-point bill, and tail a-cock.

1990 R. K. Narayan World of Nagaraj vii. 65 A long letter in pin-point writing, loading on the poor postcard enough words to cover four sheets of notepaper.

1899 Daily News 29 July 8/5 A clear Swiss muslin of very fine make, with a pin-point embroidery on it.

1942 Oxoniensia 7 42 Deeply incised ‘pinpoint’ decoration..varying a little and reverting to a plain chevron pattern.

1957 J. Kerouac On the Road ii. viii. 156 A misty pinpoint darkness.

1962 Guardian 23 Feb. 8/4 A seam-free, pin~point mesh stocking.

1997 Eddie Bauer Catal. Fall 49/2 Made of pinpoint oxford cloth, our shirt features classic styling, including real shell buttons.

1931 Times 21 Aug. 15/5 I estimate that at least three or four months of ‘officer-hours’ have been expended over this particular concentration in looking up ‘pin-point’ references to the one-inch map.

1960 V. Jenkins Lions Down Under p. xv Secretaries..looked after our internal comfort with pin-point efficiency.

1971 Morning Star 1 July 4/1 This ‘simple way’ is, of course, the result of pin-point organisation and the working out of schedules.

1994 Denver Post 16 Oct. a19 (advt.) Famous Superflat data-grade, dark black tube has improved natural phosphors for incredible color purity and pin point resolution.

1942 Helena (Montana) Independent 14 Dec. 2/2 Our planes flying only 75 feet above the ground were able to drop these bombs with pinpoint accuracy.

1958 Listener 21 Aug. 259/1 It is the ground controllers' job to see that collisions do not happen. With the equipment they have today this can be done with almost pin-point accuracy.

1976 Gramophone Aug. 370 (advt.) Dramatically improved solid stereo image and rear pin-point localisation.

1993 Time Internat. 25 Jan. 36/1 It will be able to fly more than 13,500 km without refueling and execute pinpoint landings virtually on its own.

1984 Financial Times 8 Feb. 12/6 Walking back and forth from car to kiosk and fiddling about with cash or with credit card imprinters and vouchers have become things of the past at a..filling station in Winnersh..where a system called ‘Pinpoint’ has come into action.

1987 Daily Tel. 24 Feb. 5/2 (advt.) For motorists.., we're installing Pinpoint machines for buying petrol in Shell garages all over the country.

1989 Guardian (Nexis) 16 Dec. The Pinpoint is being abandoned due to customer apathy, largely because of their inability to remember their credit card identification numbers.

1922 Times 5 Jan. 13/4 With him we stand on the bridge of the old Portuguese sailing ships trying to ‘pinpoint’ the landmarks on the shadowy coast.

1946 Birmingham (Alabama) News 5 Jan. 1/6 The Pearl Harbor committee called for photographs of the Navy's ship location board today to pinpoint movements of the Pacific Fleet in the days just before the Japanese attack.

1950 Sport 22 Sept. 18/1 Johnny..would find it difficult to pinpoint the happiest day of his soccer life to date.

1960 Analog Sci. Fact & Fiction Nov. 13/1 The only actual trouble we can pin-point is that there seem to be a great many errors occurring in the paper-work.

1977 L. Gordon Eliot's Early Years iii. 63 It is difficult to pin-point the sensibility that moves through Eliot's poems.

1992 Entrepreneur Mar. 170/2 After looking into various home computers and pinpointing select clients he could service from home, he made the tough decision to leave work altogether.

1943 Penguin New Writing 16 27 A solitary searchlight would come on suddenly. And, if it pin-pointed you, how you would writhe about the sky trying to shake it off before the endless beams of all the others caught up on you.

1957 Economist 2 Nov. 420/1 Subsequent speakers from Asia, Latin America and Europe took up these themes, each country pinpointing its own problems.

1974 F. Warner Meeting Ends i. v. 24 (stage direct.) Lights down to pinpoint Shango in wheel, still spreadeagled, back to audience.

1989 Brit. Business 18 Aug. 4/1 The event..will pinpoint the Baltic Republics..as potential gateways for trade with the USSR.

1951 J. Kerouac On the Road: Orig. Scroll (2007) 258 They pinpointed out of sight.