Definitions for sword
sɔrd, soʊrdsword

Princeton's WordNet(3.00 / 2 votes)Rate this definition:

1. sword, blade, brand, steelnoun

   a cutting or thrusting weapon that has a long metal blade and a hilt with a hand guard

Wiktionary(5.00 / 1 vote)Rate this definition:

1. swordnoun

   A long-bladed weapon having a handle and sometimes a hilt and designed to stab, cut or slash.

2. swordnoun

   Someone paid to handle a sword.

3. swordnoun

   A suit in the minor arcana in tarot.

4. swordnoun

   A card of this suit.

5. Etymology: From sword, swerd, from sweord, from swerdan, from su̯r̥dhom, from swer-. Cognate with swerd, sword, swird, swurd, zwaard, sweerd, Schwert, svärd, sverð, Old Church Slavonic.

Samuel Johnson's Dictionary(0.00 / 0 votes)Rate this definition:

1. SWORDnoun

   Etymology: sweord , Saxon; sweerd, Dutch.

   1. A weapon used either in cutting or thrusting; the usual weapon of fights hand to hand.

   Old unhappy traitor, the sword is out
   That must destroy thee. William Shakespeare, King Lear.

   Each man took his sword, and slew all the males. Gen.

   Euryalus is the only peer that is described with a sword, which he gives to Ulysses to repair his injury. William Broome.

   2. Destruction by war.

   The sword without, and terrour within. Deut. xxxii. 25.

   3. Vengeance of justice.4. Emblem of authority.

   This I, her sword bearer, do carry,
   For civil deed and military. Hudibras.

Webster Dictionary(0.00 / 0 votes)Rate this definition:

1. Swordnoun

   an offensive weapon, having a long and usually sharp/pointed blade with a cutting edge or edges. It is the general term, including the small sword, rapier, saber, scimiter, and many other varieties

2. Swordnoun

   hence, the emblem of judicial vengeance or punishment, or of authority and power

3. Swordnoun

   destruction by the sword, or in battle; war; dissension

4. Swordnoun

   the military power of a country

5. Swordnoun

   one of the end bars by which the lay of a hand loom is suspended

6. Etymology: [OE. swerd, AS. sweord; akin to OFries. swerd, swird, D. zwaard, OS. swerd, OHG. swert, G. schwert, Icel. sver, Sw. svrd, Dan. svaerd; of uncertain origin.]

Freebase(0.00 / 0 votes)Rate this definition:

1. Sword

   A sword is a bladed weapon used primarily for cutting or thrusting. The precise definition of the term varies with the historical epoch or the geographical region under consideration. A sword in the most narrow sense consists of a straight blade with two edges and a hilt. However, in nearly every case, the term may also be used to refer to weapons with a single edge. The word sword comes from the Old English sweord, cognate to swert, Old Norse sverð, from a Proto-Indo-European root *swer- "to wound, to cut". Non-European weapons called "sword" include single-edged weapons such as the Middle Eastern saif, the Chinese dao and the related Japanese katana. The Chinese jian is an example of a non-European double-edged sword, like the European models derived from the double-edged Iron Age sword. Historically, the sword developed in the Bronze Age, evolving from the dagger; the earliest specimens date to ca. 1600 BC. The Iron Age sword remained fairly short and without a crossguard. The spatha as it developed in the Late Roman army became the predecessor of the European sword of the Middle Ages, at first adopted as the Migration period sword, and only in the High Middle Ages developed into the classical arming sword with crossguard.

Military Dictionary and Gazetteer(0.00 / 0 votes)Rate this definition:

1. sword

   A well-known weapon of war, the introduction of which dates beyond the ken of history. It may be defined as a blade of steel, having one or two edges, set in a hilt, and used with a motion of the whole arm. Damascus and Toledo blades have been brought to such perfection, that the point can be made to touch the hilt and to fly back to its former position. In the last century every gentleman wore a sword; now the use of the weapon is almost confined to purposes of war. Among the forms of the sword are the rapier, cutlass, broadsword, scimiter, sabre, etc.

Matched Categories

1. • Weapon

British National Corpus

1. Nouns Frequency

   Rank popularity for the word 'sword' in Nouns Frequency: #1938

Anagrams for sword »

1. words

How to pronounce sword?

1. Alex

   US English

   David

   US English

   Mark

   US English

   Daniel

   British

   Libby

   British

   Mia

   British

   Karen

   Australian

   Hayley

   Australian

   Natasha

   Australian

   Veena

   Indian

   Priya

   Indian

   Neerja

   Indian

   Zira

   US English

   Oliver

   British

   Wendy

   British

   Fred

   US English

   Tessa

   South African

How to say sword in sign language?

Numerology

1. Chaldean Numerology

   The numerical value of sword in Chaldean Numerology is: 4

2. Pythagorean Numerology

   The numerical value of sword in Pythagorean Numerology is: 7

Examples of sword in a Sentence

1. Woody Allen, Without Feathers:

   Whosoever shall not fall by the sword or by famine, shall fall by pestilence so why bother shaving?

2. Gordon William Allport:

   So many tangles in life are ultimately hopeless that we have no appropriate sword other than laughter.

3. Courtesy Bernard Wilkin/AWAP Wilkin:

   One of the skulls is deeply damaged by a sword or a bayonet, so it was a very brutal way of dying.

4. Zhang Chunxian:

   Xinjiang's anti-terrorism fight has entered a phase that is more complicated and more intense than in the past, we must take the initiative to brandish the sword, take the offensive and comprehensively attack.

5. Andrew Tabler:

   Having a sword of Damocles having over Assad's head is not necessarily a bad thing.

Popularity rank by frequency of use