scythe - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

scythe (1) (larger) and sickle (smaller)

From Middle English sythe, sithe, from Old English sīþe, sīgþe, sigdi (“sickle”), from Proto-West Germanic *sigiþi, from Proto-Germanic *sigiþiz, *sigiþō, derived from *seg- (“saw”), from Proto-Indo-European *sek- (“to cut”).[1]

Immediate Germanic cognates include Middle Low German sēgede, Dutch zicht, Icelandic sigð (all “sickle”). More distantly related with Dutch zeis, German Sense (both “scythe”). Also akin to English saw, which see.

The silent c crept in during the early 15th century owing to folk-etymological association with Medieval Latin scissor (“tailor, carver”), from Latin scindō (“to cut, rend, split”).

The verb, which was first used in the intransitive sense, is from the noun.

scythe (plural scythes)

  1. An instrument for mowing grass, grain, etc. by hand, composed of a long, curving blade with a sharp concave edge, fastened to a long handle called a snath. [before 10th century]
    • 1886, Peter Christen Asbj&oslash￵rnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 41:
      Early next morning the gudewife took a scythe on her shoulder, and went out in the fields with the hay-mowers to mow.
  2. (historical) A scythe-shaped blade attached to ancient war chariots.
  3. (cartomancy) The tenth Lenormand card.

scythe (third-person singular simple present scythes, present participle scything, simple past and past participle scythed)

  1. (intransitive) To use a scythe. [from 1570s]
  2. (transitive) To cut with a scythe. [from 1570s]
  3. (transitive) To cut off as with a scythe; to mow. [from 1590s]
  4. (intransitive, figurative, often with through) To attack or injure as if cutting.
    • 2011, Catherine Sampson, The Pool of Unease:
      The boy began to keen, and the high-pitched noise scythed through Song's head.
    • 2019 February 27, Drachinifel, 20:09 from the start, in The Battle of Samar - Odds? What are those?‎[1], archived from the original on 3 November 2022:
      The smaller shells make a complete slaughterhouse of the bridge, and the splinters scythe through anyone out on deck.

to cut with a scythe

  1. ^ Douglas Harper (2001–2026), “scythe”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.

See Scythe (“Scythian”)

scythe (plural scythes)

  1. Scythian