earmark (ermark)

[ thing is known. What distinguishing marks can a man fix upon a set of intellectual ideas, so as to call himself proprietor of them? They have no earmarks upon them, no tokens of a par- ticular proprietor. Burrows. An element of disproportion, of grotesquene , earmark of the barbarian, disturbs us, even when it does not dis- gust, in them all [songs of the Trouvères]. Lowell , Study Windows, p. 243. earmark (ēr'märk), v. t. [ Spenser, Mother Hub. Tale.