glaive

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English

Etymology

Illustrations of glaives (sense 2)[n 1]
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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

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  • Audio (UK):(file)
  • Rhymes: -eɪv

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, page 124:
      Yea, that same awful angel with the glaive / Which in disparadising orbit swept / Lintel and pilaster and architrave

Derived terms

Translations

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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, 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 Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, 1899; “glaive”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Further reading

Anagrams

French

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

Noun

glaive m (plural glaives)

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

Further reading

Old French

Alternative forms

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

  1. sword

Descendants

  • → English: glaive
  • French: glaive

See also

References

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