SPEAR • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Spear

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/spɪr/ Listen

noun

Spear n.

A long, pointed weapon, used in war and hunting, by thrusting or throwing; a weapon with a long shaft and a sharp head or blade; a lance. "A sharp ground spear." "They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks."

Fig.: A spearman.

A sharp-pointed instrument with barbs, used for stabbing fish and other animals.

A shoot, as of grass; a spire.

The feather of a horse. See Feather, n., 4.

The rod to which the bucket, or plunger, of a pump is attached; a pump rod.

Spear foot, the off hind foot of a horse.

Spear grass. (Bot.)

(a)

The common reed. See Reed, n., 1.

(b)

meadow grass. See under Meadow.

Spear hand, the hand in which a horseman holds a spear; the right hand.

Spear side, the male line of a family.

Spear thistle (Bot.), the common thistle (Cnicus lanceolatus).

verb

Spear v. t. (past & past part. speared; pres. part. spearing) To pierce with a spear; to kill with a spear; as, to spear a fish.

Spear v. i. To shoot into a long stem, as some plants. See Spire.

See images of 'Spear'

Etymology of 'Spear'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar

"Spear" Quotes from Famous Books

... had been suggested by some observation he had just made on the competitors, as they passed in the second circuit. "So well, I mean, as Aurelius Victor said; and would you undertake the combat of the horse and spear with Caius Marcius?" ...

— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... extravagant in their demands, being accustomed to sell their trifles to whalers and China ships, whose crews will purchase anything at ten times its value. My only purchases were a float belonging to a turtle-spear, carved to resemble a bird, and a very well made palm-leaf box, for which articles I gave a copper ring and a yard of calico. The canoes were very narrow and furnished with an outrigger, and in some of them there was only one man, who seemed to think nothing ...

— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... "Gordon" has baffled the etymologists, for there is every reason to believe that the not inappropriate connection with the Danish word for a spear is due to a felicitous fancy rather than to any substantial reality. There is far more justification for the opinion that the name comes through a French source than from a Danish. The Gorduni were a leading clan of Caesar's most formidable opponents, ...

— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... in the most unexpected fashion. A fisherman named Luigi, paddling about the stern of the FLUTTERBY where, in consequence of the kitchen refuse thrown overboard, marine beasts of every shape and kind were wont to congregate, cast down his spear at what looked like a splendid caerulean flat-fish of uncommon size and brilliance. The creature shivered and collapsed at that contact in the most unnatural, unfishlike manner; and Luigi drew up, to his amazement, a fragment of a lady's dress—to wit, a short length of ...

— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... Carpaccio's pictures floated before him, and Tintoretto's—record of dead generations; and then, by the link of size, those even vaster paintings—in gouache—of Vermayen in Vienna: old land-fights with crossbow, spear, and arquebus, old sea-fights with inter-grappling galleys. He thought of galley-slaves chained to their oar—the sweat, the blood that had stained history. "So I returned and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and ...

— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

More quotes...