E. Cobham Brewer 1810–1897. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898.
Ten Commandments (The).
Scratching the face with the ten fingers of an angry woman; or a blow with the two fists of an angry man, in which the “ten commandments are summarised into two.”
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“Could I come near your beauty with my nails,
I’d set my ten commandments in your face.”
Shakespeare: 2 Henry VI., i. 3.
“‘I daur you to touch him,’ spreading abroad her long and muscular fingers, garnished with claws, which a vulture might have envied. I’ll set my ten commandments on the face of the first loon that lays a finger on him.”—Sir W. Scott: Waverley, chap. xxx.
