sword
/sɔːd
/- Other lethal weapons such as swords, bayonets, crossbows and knives have also been surrendered.
- The light played off the steel blades of swords, daggers and the occasional axe.
Synonyms
- And even though he would have liked an honorable death by the sword I do not think that he ever wished for this to happen the way it did.
- In South America, the earliest Aztecs had converted people by the sword.
- The historical sources are clear that the relationship was hostile and that negotiation was by the sword.
- The suits are cups, coins, swords and batons, and each suit contains seven different cards.
- The four Latin suits are swords, batons, cups and coins.
Phrases
beat (or turn) swords into ploughshares
fall on one's sword
he who lives by the sword dies by the sword
put to the sword
the sword of justice
Derivatives
sword-like
- The sword-like arms glinted in the sun of the morning.
- The cooked parts of the cone of meat are cut into very thin slices with a huge, sword-like knife and arranged on a plate with pickles and pita bread.
- Other figures wear carnivalesque masks with sword-like beaks, marking them as birds of prey.
Origin
Old English sw(e)ord, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch zwaard and German Schwert.
As with swim, Beowulf gives us the first example of sword. The notion of devoting resources to peaceful rather than aggressive or warlike ends is sometimes expressed as beating (or turning) swords into ploughshares, a reference to the biblical image of God's peaceful rule: ‘they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks’ (Book of Isaiah). Also biblical is the expression he who lives by the sword dies by the sword—in the Gospel of Matthew, when men came to arrest Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane one of his disciples drew his sword and cut off the ear of ‘the servant of the high priest’, earning a rebuke from Jesus: ‘All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.’ See also thread