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spear

Pronunciation: /spɪə̯(ɹ)/

The English word “spear” has 18 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A long stick with a sharp tip used as a weapon for throwing or thrusting, or anything used to make a thrusting motion.
  2. A soldier armed with such a weapon; a spearman.
  3. A lance with barbed prongs, used by fishermen to retrieve fish.
  4. An illegal maneuver using the end of a hockey stick to strike into another hockey player.
  5. In professional wrestling, a running tackle in which the wrestler's shoulder is driven into the opponent's midsection.
  6. A shoot, as of grass; a spire.
  7. The feather of a horse.
  8. The rod to which the bucket, or plunger, of a pump is attached; a pump rod.
  9. A long, thin strip from a vegetable.
  10. The sprout of a plant, stalk
  11. A church spire.

verb

  1. To pierce with a spear.
  2. 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.
  3. To tackle an opponent by ramming into them with one's helmet.
  4. To shoot into a long stem, as some plants do.
  5. To ignore as a social snub.

adjective

  1. Male.
  2. Pertaining to male family members.

Etymology

From Middle English spere, sperre, spear, from Old English spere, from Proto-West Germanic *speru, from Proto-Germanic *speru, from Proto-Indo-European *sperH-. Cognates See also West Frisian spear, Dutch speer, German Speer, Old Norse spjǫr, *sparrô, Middle Dutch sparre (“rafter”), Old Norse sparri (“spar, rafter”), sperra (“rafter, beam”); also Latin sparus (“short spear”), Albanian ferrë…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.