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What does spear mean?

Definitions for spear
spɪərspear

This dictionary definitions page includes all the possible meanings, example usage and translations of the word spear.

Princeton's WordNet

  1. spear, lance, shaftnoun

    a long pointed rod used as a tool or weapon

  2. spear, gig, fizgig, fishgig, lanceverb

    an implement with a shaft and barbed point used for catching fish

  3. spearverb

    pierce with a spear

    "spear fish"

  4. spear, spear upverb

    thrust up like a spear

    "The branch speared up into the air"

Wiktionary

  1. spearnoun

    A long stick with a sharp tip used as a weapon for throwing or thrusting, or anything used to make a thrusting motion.

  2. spearnoun

    A sharp tool used by fishermen to retrieve fish.

  3. spearnoun

    an illegal maneuver using the end of a hockey stick to strike into another hockey player

  4. spearnoun

    a running tackle on an opponent performed in professional wrestling.

  5. spearnoun

    A long, thin strip from a vegetable.

    asparagus and broccoli spears

  6. spearverb

    To penetrate or strike with, or as if with, any long narrow object. To make a thrusting motion that catches an object on the tip of a long device.

  7. Etymology: spere, from *speri (compare / speer, spjör), from *sparron (compare sparre 'rafter', sparri 'spar, rafter', sperra 'rafter, beam'), from *spar- (compare sparus 'short spear', ferrë 'thorn, thornbush').

Samuel Johnson's Dictionary

  1. Spearnoun

    Etymology: ys-per, Welsh; spere , Saxon; spere, Dutch; spare, old French; sparum, low Lat.

    Th’ Egyptian, like a hill, himself did rear,
    Like some tall tree; upon it seem’d a spear. Abraham Cowley.

    Nor wanted in his grasp
    What seem’d both shield and spear. John Milton.

    The flying spear
    Sung innocent, and spent its force in air. Alexander Pope.

    The rous’d up lion, resolute and slow,
    Advances full on the protended spear. James Thomson.

    The borderers watching, until they be past up into some narrow creek, below them, cast a strong corded net athwart the stream, with which, and their loud shouting, they stop them from retiring, until the ebb have abandoned them to the hunter’s mercy, who, by an old custom, share them with such indifferency, as if a woman with child be present, the babe in her womb is gratified with a portion: a point also observed by the spear-hunters in taking of salmons. Carew.

  2. To Spearverb

    To kill or pierce with a spear.

    Etymology: from the noun.

  3. To Spearverb

    To shoot or sprout. This is commonly written spire.

    Let them not lie lest they should spear, and the air dry and spoil the shoot. John Mortimer, Husbandry.

Wikipedia

  1. Spear

    A spear is a pole weapon consisting of a shaft, usually of wood, with a pointed head. The head may be simply the sharpened end of the shaft itself, as is the case with fire hardened spears, or it may be made of a more durable material fastened to the shaft, such as bone, flint, obsidian, iron, steel, or bronze. The most common design for hunting or combat spears since ancient times has incorporated a metal spearhead shaped like a triangle, lozenge, or leaf. The heads of fishing spears usually feature barbs or serrated edges. The word spear comes from the Old English spere, from the Proto-Germanic speri, from a Proto-Indo-European root *sper- "spear, pole". Spears can be divided into two broad categories: those designed for thrusting as a melee weapon and those designed for throwing as a ranged weapon (usually referred to as javelins or darts). The spear has been used throughout human history both as a hunting and fishing tool and as a weapon. Along with the club, knife, and axe, it is one of the earliest and most important tools developed by early humans. As a weapon, it may be wielded with either one or two hands. It was used in virtually every conflict up until the modern era, where even then it continues on in the form of the fixed bayonet on a long gun, and is probably the most commonly used weapon in history.

ChatGPT

  1. spear

    A spear is a pole weapon or projectile, primarily designed for long-range combat, consisting of a shaft, usually made of wood, with a sharpened point, often made of flint, metal, or bone. The point may be either thrown at an opponent or enemy from a distance or used in close-quarter combat. It is one of the oldest weapons used by humans for hunting and warfare.

Webster Dictionary

  1. Spearnoun

    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

  2. Spearnoun

    fig.: A spearman

  3. Spearnoun

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

  4. Spearnoun

    a shoot, as of grass; a spire

  5. Spearnoun

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

  6. Spearnoun

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

  7. Spearverb

    to pierce with a spear; to kill with a spear; as, to spear a fish

  8. Spearverb

    to shoot into a long stem, as some plants. See Spire

  9. Etymology: [OE. spere, AS. spere; akin to D. & G. speer, OS. & OHS. sper, Icel. spjr, pl., Dan. spaer, L. sparus.]

Wikidata

  1. Spear

    A spear is a pole weapon consisting of a shaft, usually of wood, with a pointed head. The head may be simply the sharpened end of the shaft itself, as is the case with bamboo spears, or it may be made of a more durable material fastened to the shaft, such as flint, obsidian, iron, steel or bronze. The most common design for hunting or combat spears since ancient times has incorporated a metal spearhead shaped like a triangle, lozenge or leaf. The heads of fishing spears usually feature barbs or serrated edges. Spears can be divided into two broad categories: those designed for thrusting in melee combat and those designed for throwing. The spear has been used throughout human history both as a hunting and fishing tool and as a weapon. As a weapon, it may wielded with either one hand or two. It was used in virtually every conflict up until the modern era and was most likely the most commonly used weapon.

Chambers 20th Century Dictionary

  1. Spear

    spēr, n. a long weapon used in war and hunting, made of a pole pointed with iron: a lance with barbed prongs used for catching fish.—v.t. to pierce or kill with a spear.—ns. Spear′-fish, a kind of carp-sucker—also Sail-fish and Skimback: the bill-fish, a histiophoroid fish related to the swordfish; Spear′-foot, the off or right hind-foot of a horse; Spear′-grass, a name applied to various grasses, esp. those known as meadow-grass, the Kentucky blue-grass: either of two New Zealand plants of the parsley family with long spinous leaflets; Spear′-head, the iron point of a spear; Spear′-lil′y, a plant of one of the species of the Australian genus Doryanthes of the Amaryllideæ, with sword-shaped leaves; Spear′man, a man armed with a spear; Spear′mint, the common garden-mint; Spear′-this′tle, the common thistle; Spear′-wood, one of two Australian trees whose wood makes good spear-shafts; Spear′-wort, the name of several species of Ranunculus with lance-shaped leaves. [A.S. spere; Ger. speer, L. sparus; cf. Spar.]

Military Dictionary and Gazetteer

  1. spear

    A lance or long weapon with a sharp point, formerly used as a manual or missile weapon. Pliny ascribes the invention of the spear to the Etolians. The spear of the Greeks was generally of ash, with a leaf-shaped head of metal, and furnished with a pointed ferrule at the butt, with which it was stuck in the ground; a method used, according to Homer, when the troops rested on their arms, or slept upon their shields. The cross spear-heads of the Britons were all pyramidal, narrowing at the base. The heads of the Anglo-Saxon spears were exceedingly long, and sometimes dreadfully barbed.

Surnames Frequency by Census Records

  1. SPEAR

    According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Spear is ranked #2712 in terms of the most common surnames in America.

    The Spear surname appeared 13,284 times in the 2010 census and if you were to sample 100,000 people in the United States, approximately 5 would have the surname Spear.

    86.8% or 11,542 total occurrences were White.
    7.4% or 983 total occurrences were Black.
    2.5% or 332 total occurrences were of Hispanic origin.
    1.9% or 258 total occurrences were of two or more races.
    0.7% or 104 total occurrences were American Indian or Alaskan Native.
    0.4% or 65 total occurrences were Asian.

Matched Categories

Usage in printed sourcesFrom: 

Anagrams for spear »

  1. apers

  2. apres

  3. après

  4. aprés

  5. asper

  6. as per

  7. pares

  8. parse

  9. pears

  10. præs.

  11. rapes

  12. reaps

  13. RESPA

  14. sarpe

  15. s

  16. spare

  17. prase

  18. spaer

How to pronounce spear?

How to say spear in sign language?

Numerology

  1. Chaldean Numerology

    The numerical value of spear in Chaldean Numerology is: 1

  2. Pythagorean Numerology

    The numerical value of spear in Pythagorean Numerology is: 5

Examples of spear in a Sentence

  1. Simon Taylor:

    This database will be a rich source of information for the bad guys to create very compelling, targeted spear phishing attacks and increases the likelihood of recipients opening email attachments, which renders them, and their respective organizations, highly exposed to attack.

  2. James Scott:

    A single spear-phishing email carrying a slightly altered malware can bypass multi-million dollar enterprise security solutions if an adversary deceives a cyber-hygienically apathetic employee into opening the attachment or clicking a malicious link and thereby compromising the entire network.

  3. James Scott:

    A Nation State or Cyber-Mercenary won’t hack e-voting machines one by one. This takes too long and will have minimal impact. Instead, they’ll take an easier approach like spear phishing the manufacturer with malware and poison the voting machine update pre-election and allow the manufacturer to update each individual machine with a self-deleting payload that will target the tabulation process.

  4. George Karavetsos:

    I can't think of anybody who would be better positioned to the be the tip of the spear for the vaccine, there has been no letup on the gas with her in an acting capacity.

  5. William Evanina:

    All organizations are vulnerable to insider threats from employees who may use their authorized access to facilities, personnel or information to harm their organizations - intentionally or unintentionally, the harm can range from negligence, such as failing to secure data or clicking on a spear-phishing link, to malicious activities like theft, sabotage, espionage, unauthorized disclosure of classified information or even violence.

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Popularity rank by frequency of use

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Translations for spear

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"spear." Definitions.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 14 Oct. 2024. <https://www.definitions.net/definition/spear>.

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    a game in which players throw or flip a jackknife in various ways so that the knife sticks in the ground
    A foumart
    B liniment
    C mumblety-peg
    D brashness

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