coulter

See also: Coulter

English

Parts of a plough: 1. ploughbeam; 2. hake; 3. regulator; 4. coulter; 5. chisel; 6. ploughshare; 7. mouldboard; 8. ploughstaff.

disk-style coulter (rotary coulter) (center) and jointer (left)

Alternative forms

• colter (US)
• culter (obsolete)

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English culter, from Old English culter, from Latin culter (“a knife”). For the phonetic development, see poultry.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈkəʊltə/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Audio (US):

  (file)

Noun

coulter (plural coulters)

2. A cutter, consisting of a blade in either knife form or disk form, attached to the ploughbeam of a plough to cut the sward, in front of the ploughshare and mouldboard.

   Alternative forms: colter (less common, even in US), culter (obsolete)

   Holonyms: plough, plow < implement

   Comeronyms: ploughshare, plowshare, moldboard, mouldboard, jointer, chisel

   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book VI, Canto IX”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     I lately left a furrow, one or twayne, / Unplough'd, the which my coulter hath not cleft […].

   • 1644, John Milton, Areopagitica:

     What is it but a servitude like that impos'd by the Philistims, not to be allow'd the sharpning of our own axes and coulters, but we must repair from all quarters to twenty licencing forges.

   • 1791, Erasmus Darwin, The Economy of Vegetation, J. Johnson, page 150:

     With colters bright the rushy sward bisect, / And in new veins the gushing rills direct […] .

3. (UK) The part of a seed drill that makes the furrow for the seed.

Derived terms

• sea coulter

Translations

cutter attached to the beam of a plow

• Breton: kontell (br) f
• Catalan: ganivet (ca) m
• Cornish: kolter m
• Czech: čertadlo n, krojidlo n, nůž (cs) m
• Dutch: kouter (nl) m
• Finnish: veitsi (fi)
• French: coutre (fr) m
• Galician: tieira f, teiroa f
• German: Sech (de) n, Kolter (de) n, Pflugmesser n
• Hungarian: csoroszlya (hu)
• Irish: coltar m
• Italian: coltello (it) m, coltro (it) m
• Polish: krój pługa m
• Portuguese: teiró m
• Russian: предплу́жник (ru) (predplúžnik)
• Spanish: cuchillo (es) m
• Turkish:

  Ottoman Turkish: قلج (kılıc), صبان بیچاغی (saban bıçağı)

• Walloon: coûte (wa) m
• Welsh: cwlltwr m

part of a seed drill

• Finnish: veitsi (fi)
• Polish: krój siewnika m

Further reading

• “coulter”, in Collins English Dictionary, 2011–present.

Anagrams

• cloture, clouter, clôture, lectour

Middle English

Noun

coulter

1. alternative form of culter