Meaning of glaive | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A light lance with a long, sharp-pointed head.
   historical, obsolete
2. A weapon consisting of a pole with a large blade fixed on the end, the edge of which is on the outside curve.
   historical
3. A sword, particularly a broadsword.
   archaic, broadly, poetic

Equivalents

Examples

“The lance, or glaive as it is often called, of the eleventh and twelfth centuries was quite straight and smooth; a vamplate was added in the fourteenth, small at first but larger later, for the protection of the right arm.”

“The Welch Glaive is a kind of bill, ſometimes reckoned among the pole axes. They were formerly much in uſe. [...] In the Britiſh Muſeum there is an entry of a warrant, granted to Nicholas Spicer, authoriſing him to impreſs ſmiths for making two thouſand Welch bills or glaives.”

“With the spear comes the use of the shield; yet the San Cristoval spearmen use no such defence, but turn off spears thrown at them with long curved glaives, and the shields in use in Florida are not made in that island.”

“At that moment Ilane swung the bladed staff—glaive, Kel remembered as it swung, they called it a glaive—in a wide side cut, slicing one pirate across the chest.”

“[T]he glaiue which he did wield / He gan forthwith t'auale, and way vnto me yield.”

“Wherefore do you ſo ill tranſlate yourſelf, / Out of the ſpeech of peace, that bears ſuch grace, / Into the harſh and boiſt'rous tongue of war? / Turning your books to glaives, your ink to blood, / Your pens to lances, and your tongue divine / To a loud trumpet, and a point of war?”

“Juſtice were cruel weakly to relent; / From Mercy’s Self ſhe got her ſacred Glaive: / Grace be to thoſe who can, and will, repent; / But Penance long, and dreary, to the Slave, / Who muſt in Floods of Fire his groſs ſoul Spirit lave.”

“Thus furth he drew his truſty glaive, / While thouſands all arround, / Drawn frae their ſheaths glanſt in the ſun, / And loud the bougills ſound.”

“Yea, that same awful angel with the glaive / Which in disparadising orbit swept / Lintel and pilaster and architrave”

CEFR level