spear biscuits

English

Pronunciation

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Verb

spear biscuits (third-person singular simple present spears biscuits, present participle spearing biscuits, simple past and past participle speared biscuits)

1. (homeless slang) To search garbage for food.
   • 2014, David W. Goodwin, The Six-Year-Old Hobo, →ISBN:

     They're great campers and know how to spear biscuits and how to avoid the pussy footers and use a number ten gunboat can and chuck a dummy and hunt a wampus, you know, cool things like that.

   • 2014, Matthew Del Papa, Green Eyes Through Capreol, →ISBN, page 28:

     “Anything to keep from 'spearing biscuits' ... that's a last resort.” “Uh,” Terry began, before finally just giving up and asking, “What's that mean?” “Spearing biscuits? That's the polite way of saying digging through garbage looking for food.

   • 2016, Peter McLaren, “Revolutionary Critical Pedagogy: Staking a Claim Against the Macrostructural Unconscious”, in Critical Education, volume 7, number 8:

     If the hall-and-parlor house represents education in the main, then we critical educators are as rare as hen's teeth, shunted to the rear of the house, squatters huddled under a slanted roof, wearing fingerless gloves, clutching our tin cups of broth, spearing biscuits and dreaming of the day when we will become an official part of the architecture of democracy.

2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see spear,‎ biscuits.
   • 1989, Carla J. Mills, Three Rivers, →ISBN, page 65:

     Most of the cowboys were either eating or standing in line at their spread's chuck wagon, taking plate, cup, and eating tools, then spearing biscuits and a steak from a row of Dutch ovens ...