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1822 N. Amer. Rev. Oct. 344 The Boston folks are sharp indeed..he expected every moment to see the dogs pull out a bag of wooden nutmegs.

1830 J. Galt Lawrie Todd I. ii. i. 90 ‘I reckon, Squire Lawrie,’ said he [sc. a Vermont farmer], ‘is a puffing of a parley voo, but I sells no wooden nutmegs.’

1836 T. C. Haliburton Clockmaker 1st Ser. viii. 26 That etarnal scoundrel, that Captain John Allspice of Nahant, he..carried a cargo once..of fifty barrels of nutmegs: well, he put half a bushel of good ones into each eend of the barrel, and the rest he filled up with wooden ones... Says he [sc. General Cuffy], there's one manufacture that might stump all Europe to produce the like. What's that? says I... Why, says he, the facture of wooden nutmegs; that's a cap sheef that bangs the bush—its a real Yankee patent invention.

1849 H. D. Thoreau Week Concord & Merrimack Rivers 101 There are new and patented inventions in this shape, purporting to be for the elevation of the race, which many a pure scholar and genius..is..deceived by, and finds himself reading a horse-rake, or spinning jenny, or wooden nutmeg, or oak-leaf cigar,..perchance, when he was seeking serene and biblical truths.

1871 M. S. De Vere Americanisms 620 In the press and Congress wooden nutmegs have to answer for forged telegrams, political tricks, and falsified election-returns.

1890 Scots Observer 18 Jan. What should he do with a thesis? What he really wants is a wooden nutmeg or a razor-strop.

1898 Argosy Sept. 287 I'll bet you a last year's almanac against a wooden nutmeg that I can go as straight to the bottom as you can.

1900 E. Gregory Ways of Men iv. 32 Our grandfathers contributed the wooden nutmeg to civilization, and endowed a grateful universe with other money-saving devices.

1918 Mississippi Valley Hist. Rev. 5 155 One writer states that all the ‘tin-wagon, pit-coal-indigo, wooden-nutmeg, and wooden-clock’ peddlers of Connecticut..had suddenly turned into book agents.

1982 Christian Sci. Monitor 18 Mar. 22 Hong Kong robots..will produce our goods, which we will merely advertise and distribute–a nation of Yankee pedlars marketing wooden nutmegs made in Taiwan.

2001 Edmonton Sun 14 Apr. 11 Together, the federal Liberals and Canadian Alliance MPs have been asking us this week to accept a wooden nutmeg the size of a bungalow.