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sickle

UK/ˈsɪkl̩/US/ˈsɪkl̩/
nounB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,349 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: sickles

A sickle is a short curved blade for cutting corn by hand. Swing a sickle, a sickle and hammer, sharpen the sickle.

You hold the crop in one hand and cut with the other, which is why it is short — a scythe is the two-handed tool for the same job at speed. The hammer and sickle stood for the industrial worker and the peasant together.

Krish Dulal · CC BY-SA 3.0

Definitions of sickle

  1. 1nounsickleA short curved blade for cutting corn by hand.B2+

    “The farmer cut the wheat by hand with a sickle.”

sickle is a tool.

Where it comes from

Old English sicol comes from Latin secula, a sickle, from secare, to cut.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *sek-

  2. Latin

    sēcula — sickle

  3. Proto-West Germanic

    *sikilu

  4. Old English

    sicol

  5. Middle English

    sikel

  6. English, today

    sickle

Built from

  • sīcīlis · Latin — sickle

From Middle English sikel (also assibilated in sichel), from Old English sicol, siċel, from Proto-West Germanic sikilu, itself borrowed from Latin sēcula (“sickle”) or sīcīlis (“sickle”). Cognate with Dutch sikkel, German Sichel. Remotely related with scythe and saw.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Farm & Countryside

Practise this word

sickle in the wild

  • The hammer and sickle is a communist symbol that represents unity between workers and peasants.

    Hammer and sickle

  • Some countries have imposed bans on communist symbols, where the display of the hammer and sickle is prohibited.

    Hammer and sickle

  • Since the beginning of the Iron Age hundreds of region-specific variants of the sickle have evolved, initially of iron and later steel.

    Sickle

  • The serrated blade that originated in prehistoric sickles still dominates in the reaping of grain and is even found in modern grain-harvesting machines and in some kitchen knives.

    Sickle

  • The khopesh is an Egyptian sickle-shaped sword that developed from battle axes.

    Khopesh

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.