tooth duller
Tooth duller is a sardonic military slang term for hardtack — the notoriously hard, dense biscuits issued to soldiers and sailors as a field ration.
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Tooth duller is a sardonic military slang term for hardtack — the notoriously hard, dense biscuits issued to soldiers and sailors as a field ration. The nickname captures the lived experience of biting into hardtack unprepared: it could chip or blunt teeth if not soaked in liquid first. Typically used in historical military contexts and is now more of a piece of colourful period slang than active usage.
The soldiers nicknamed their rations 'tooth dullers' after one man cracked a molar on a dry biscuit.
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(derogatory, military slang) Hardtack.
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In civilian use, sheet iron is simply thin flat iron rolled into sheets — a basic industrial material. But in military slang, particularly among soldiers who endured it, "sheet iron" was a derogatory nickname for hardtack, the rock-hard crackers issued as field rations. The comparison was brutally apt: hardtack was notoriously nearly inedible without soaking, and soldiers joked bitterly that eating it risked breaking teeth.
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