corporal's guard en · NOUN
Meanings
- A small detachment of guards under the charge of a corporal.
-
(broadly) A very small number of people.
Our thousand did the Capitol little harm that a corporal’s guard of Biddies with mops and tubs could not repair in a forenoon’s campaign.
1863, Theodore Winthrop, edited by G. W. Curtis, Life in the Open Air, and Other Papers, Washington as a Camp: