TO HAVE A COLT or COLT’S TOOTH, verbal phr. (old).—To be fond of youthful pleasures; in the case of elderly persons, to have juvenile tastes; to be of wanton disposition and capacity. [In allusion to a supposed desire to shed the teeth and see life over again.]

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  1590.  MARLOWE, 2 Tamburlaine the Great, iv. 3.

          Tech.  Nay, we will break the hedges of their mouths,
And pull their kicking COLTS out of their pastures.

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  1606.  Sir Gyles Goosecappe, v., 2, in BULLEN’S Old Plays, iii., 87. I shood doe my country, and Court-ship good service to beare thy COALTS TEETH out of thy head, for suffering such a reverend word to passe their guarde.

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  1637.  FLETCHER, The Elder Brother, II., iii.

                  He should love her now,
As he hath a COLT’S TOOTH yet.

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  1753.  WALPOLE, Letter to Sir Horace Mann, 27 April (1833), vol. III., p. 89. I hear that my Lord Granville has cut another COLT’S TOOTH—in short, they say he is going to be married again … there are not above two or three-and-forty years difference in their ages.

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  1770.  COLMAN, The Portrait, in wks. (1777) IV., 215.

        Tho’ not in the bloom of my youth,
Yet still I have left a COLT’S TOOTH.

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  1812.  C. K. SHARPE, in Correspondence (1888), II., 5. Tyndall and I always fought about noblemen, tho’ I suspected his COLT’S TOOTH with regard to Lord Apsley, who is a mighty good sort of man, but only captivating.

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