blade

From Middle English blade, blad, from Old English blæd (“leaf”), from Proto-Germanic *bladą (compare West Frisian bled, Dutch blad, German Blatt, Danish blad) from Proto-Indo-European *bʰlh̥₃oto (compare Irish bláth (“flower”), Tocharian A pält, Tocharian B pilta (“leaf”), Albanian fletë (“leaf”)), from *bʰleh₃- (“to thrive, bloom”). Similar usage in Sägeblatt (“saw leaf”), the German term for a saw blade. More at blow.

• enPR: blād, IPA^(key): /bleɪd/

• Audio (US)

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• Rhymes: -eɪd

Knife blades

blade (plural blades)

1. The sharp cutting edge of a knife, chisel, or other tool, a razor blade/sword.
2. The flat functional end of a propeller, oar, hockey stick, screwdriver, skate, etc.
   • 2013 July-August, Lee S. Langston, “The Adaptable Gas Turbine”, in American Scientist:

     Turbines have been around for a long time—windmills and water wheels are early examples. The name comes from the Latin turbo, meaning vortex, and thus the defining property of a turbine is that a fluid or gas turns the blades of a rotor, which is attached to a shaft that can perform useful work.

3. The narrow leaf of a grass or cereal.
4. (botany) The thin, flat part of a plant leaf, attached to a stem (petiole). The lamina.
5. A flat bone, especially the shoulder blade.
6. A cut of beef from near the shoulder blade (part of the chuck).
7. The flat part of the tongue.
8. (poetic) A sword or knife.
9. (archaeology) A piece of prepared, sharp-edged stone, often flint, at least twice as long as it is wide; a long flake of ground-edge stone or knapped vitreous stone.
10. (ultimate frisbee) A throw characterized by a tight parabolic trajectory due to a steep lateral attitude.
11. (sailing) The rudder, daggerboard, or centerboard of a vessel.
12. A bulldozer or surface-grading machine with mechanically adjustable blade that is nominally perpendicular to the forward motion of the vehicle.
13. (dated) A dashing young man.
    • Coleridge

      He saw a turnkey in a trice / Fetter a troublesome blade.

14. (slang, chiefly US) A homosexual, usually male.
15. Thin plate, foil.
16. (photography) One of a series of small plates that make up the aperture or the shutter of a camera.
17. (architecture, in the plural) The principal rafters of a roof.

    (Can we find and add a quotation of Weale to this entry?)

18. The four large shell plates on the sides, and the five large ones of the middle, of the carapace of the sea turtle, which yield the best tortoise shell.

    (Can we find and add a quotation of De Colange to this entry?)

19. Airfoil in windmills and windturbines.
20. (computing) A blade server.

• Creswell Crags

blade (third-person singular simple present blades, present participle blading, simple past and past participle bladed)

1. (informal) To skate on rollerblades.
2. (transitive) To furnish with a blade.
3. (intransitive, poetic) To put forth or have a blade.
   • P. Fletcher

     As sweet a plant, as fair a flower, is faded / As ever in the Muses' garden bladed.

4. (transitive, professional wrestling, slang) To cut (a person) so as to provoke bleeding.

• hydroblade

• Balde, abled, albed, baled, blead

• blad, blaad, bladd, blayde, blayd

From Old English blæd, from Proto-Germanic *bladą, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰl̥h₃otom.

• IPA^(key): /blaːd/, /blad/

blade (plural blades or bladdys)

1. A leaf or blade; a piece foliage in general.
2. A blade (sharp edge of a weapon).
3. Any sharp-bladed slashing or stabbing weapon.
4. (rare) A wooden tile or chip for roofing.
5. (rare) Anything close in appearance or form to a blade.

• bladyn
• blader

• English: blade
• Scots: blad, blade, blaud, blaid

• “blā̆d(e (n.)” in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-06-29.

• IPA^(key): /ˈbla.dɛ/

blade

1. inflection of blady:
   1. neuter nominative singular
   2. neuter accusative singular
   3. neuter vocative singular
   4. nonvirile nominative plural
   5. nonvirile accusative plural
   6. nonvirile vocative plural