sb. A kettle of tinned iron.
Often fig. with allusion to its being fastened to a dog’s tail to tease and frighten it, or to the noise made by beating it.
1775. R. Chandler, Trav. Asia M., viii. (1825), I. 28. [Our cook’s] tin kettle boiling over a fire in the open air.
1831. Carlyle, Sart. Res., II. iii. A Conquering Hero, to whom Fate … has malignantly appended a tin-kettle of Ambition, to chase him on.
1864. Trevelyan, Compet. Wallah (1866), 172. A new Montgomery … to whose tail fastidious middle life may attach the tin kettle of hostile criticism.
1895. Mrs. Croker, Village Tales (1896), 42. Battered old tin kettle as it was, that despised piano had cost one hundred pounds!
Hence Tin-kettle v., trans. to serenade roughly or opprobriously, also to cause (swarming bees) to settle, by beating a tin-kettle; whence Tin-kettling vbl. sb.; also Tin-kettly a., like a tin-kettle.
1875. A. J. Ellis, trans. Helmholtz’ Sensations Tone, 119. Their quality of sound is … unmusical, bad, and tin-kettly.
1898. N. & Q., 9th Ser. I. 116/2. An inn-keeper was reported to have beaten his wife,… so [his neighbours] ‘tin-kettled’ him right royally.
1900. H. Lawson, On Track, 5. The diggers … gave them a real good tinkettling in the old fashioned style. Ibid., 20. We’d tin-kettle ’em [bees],… and … they’d settle on a branch.
