glaive

English

Etymology
Illustrations of glaives (sense 2)[n 1]

From Middle English glaive (“weapon with a long shaft ending in a point or blade; lance, spear; lance used as a winning post in a race, sometimes also given to the winner as a prize”),[1] from Old French glaive (“sword”). The further etymology is uncertain; one possibility is that the Old French word is from Latin gladius (“sword”), while another is that it derives from Proto-Celtic *kladiwos (“sword”), with both ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *kelh₂- (“to beat; to break”). The Oxford English Dictionary notes that neither of these words had the oldest meaning of Old French glaive (“lance”). The English word is cognate with Middle Dutch glavie, glaye (“lance”); Middle High German glavîe, glævîn (“lance”), Swedish glaven (“lance”).[2]

Pronunciation

Noun

glaive (plural glaives)

  1. (obsolete, historical) A light lance with a long, sharp-pointed head.
  2. (historical) A weapon consisting of a pole with a large blade fixed on the end, the edge of which is on the outside curve.
    • 1786, Francis Grose, A Treatise on Ancient Armour and Weapons, page 52.:
      The Welch Glaive is a kind of bill, sometimes reckoned among the pole axes.
  3. (archaic, now loosely or poetic) A sword, particularly a broadsword.
    • Edmund Spenser:
      The glaive which he did wield.
    • 1913, Francis Thompson, The Works of Francis Thompson, volume II (Poems), London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, OCLC 832969228, page 124:
      Yea, that same awful angel with the glaive / Which in disparadising orbit swept / Lintel and pilaster and architrave

Derived terms

Translations
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.
Translations to be checked

Notes
  1. From Wendelin Boeheim (1890), “Die Glese und die Couse”, in Handbuch der Waffenkunde. Das Waffenwesen in seiner historischen Entwicklung vom Beginn des Mittelalters bis zum Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts [Handbook of Weapon Knowledge. Weaponry in Its Historical Development from the Beginning of the Middle Ages to the End of the 18th Century.] (Seemanns kunstgewerbliche Handbücher; VII), Leipzig: E. A. Seemann, OCLC 457086621, figure 396, pages 343–344.

References
  1. “glaive, n.” in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 18 April 2019.
  2. “glaive, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1899; “glaive” in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press.

Further reading

Anagrams

French

Etymology

From Old French glaive, from Latin gladius (“sword”).

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /ɡlɛv/
  • Audio(file)

Noun

glaive m (plural glaives)

  1. gladius, short sword
  2. (figuratively) sword

Further reading

Old French

Alternative forms
  • gladies (10th century)
  • gleve
  • gleyve

Etymology

Probably from an original *glede (from Latin gladius) with influence from Gaulish gladebo (“sword”). Both terms are ultimately from Proto-Celtic *kladiwos (“sword”). Alternatively, the d in *glede that had come to be pronounced as /ð/ in Old French may have been fronted to /v/ (perhaps with the additional influence of the aforementioned Gaulish term.)

Noun

glaive m (oblique plural glaives, nominative singular glaives, nominative plural glaive)

  1. sword

Descendants

See also

References
This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.