Scissors are a tool with two blades for cutting paper. A pair of scissors, kitchen scissors, sharp scissors.
The word is always plural and takes a pair, like trousers and glasses. They cut by shearing rather than by pressing, which is why blunt ones fold paper instead of cutting it and why the pivot must be tight. Left-handed scissors are genuinely different and not a gimmick.
1nounscissorsA tool with two blades for cutting.
“Can you pass me the scissors? I need to cut this string.”
scissors is a cutting tool.
Old French cisoires comes from a Late Latin word for a cutting tool, from caedere, to cut. The sc- spelling was added by a wrong connection with Latin scindere.
Medieval Latin
scissor — tailor
Latin
cīsōria
Old French
cisoirs
Middle English
sisours
English, today
scissors
Built from
From Middle English sisours (attested since 1350–1400), from Old French cisoirs, from Latin cīsōria, plural of cīsōrium (“cutting tool”); from Latin - word root -cīsus (compare excise) or caesus, past participle of caedō (“to cut”). Partially displaced native sċēara, whence shears. a doublet of chisel. The current spelling, from the 16th century, is due to association with Medieval Latin scissor (“tailor”), from Latin - carrying the meaning “carver, cutter”, from scindō (“to split”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA