Brewer's: Cheese-Toaster

(A). A sword; also called a “toasting-fork.” “Come! out with your toaster.” In Latin veru means a dart, a spit used in roasting, or a toasting fork. Thus we have “pugnant mucrone veruque Sabello” (Æn. vii. 663), and in Æn. i. 210, etc., we read that the men prepared their supper, after slaying the beasts, “pars in frustra secant, verubusque trementia figunt.” In the former example veru is used for an instrument of war, and in the latter for a toasting-fork or spit.

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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