What's the difference between axe and halberd?

Axe


Definition:

  • (n.) A tool or instrument of steel, or of iron with a steel edge or blade, for felling trees, chopping and splitting wood, hewing timber, etc. It is wielded by a wooden helve or handle, so fixed in a socket or eye as to be in the same plane with the blade. The broadax, or carpenter's ax, is an ax for hewing timber, made heavier than the chopping ax, and with a broader and thinner blade and a shorter handle.
  • () Alt. of Axeman

Example Sentences:

  • (1) An ice axe, assumed to belong to Irvine, had been discovered in 1933 by the fourth British expedition to the mountain.
  • (2) The calculated separation between the centers of these two pigments (using an extended version of the exciton theory) is about 10 A, the pigments' molecular planes are tilted by about 20 degrees, and their N1-N3 axes are rotated by 150 degrees relative to each other.
  • (3) The helix axes, penetrating the hydrophobic region of the bilayers, were oriented neither parallel nor perpendicular to the membrane normal.
  • (4) Glencore has responded in textbook fashion: it has cut operating costs, sold assets and taken the axe to capital investment.
  • (5) Early papers on interspecies pharmacokinetic scaling normalized the x- and y-axes to illustrate the superimpossibility of pharmacokinetic curves from different species.
  • (6) Loss-making Northern Rock is axing another 680 jobs as it cuts costs in preparation for a return to the private sector after being nationalised in February 2008 .
  • (7) Thousands of jobs have been axed , including more than 4,000 senior nurses .
  • (8) The authors have studied the longest and the shortest nuclear axes, the ratio between nuclear axes, the nuclear areas and the mitotic indices in melanocytic tumors and have noted progressive changes of the values in superficial spreading and in nodular melanoma as compared to nevi.
  • (9) UniCredit, Italy’s biggest bank, last week announced plans to raise €13bn in a record-breaking share issue and axe 11% of the workforce.
  • (10) The BBC should not be forced to close any channels or axe any programmes as part of any review of plurality and ownership in the media industry, according to a submission the broadcaster has filed with media regulator Ofcom .
  • (11) In this paper, the three rotational axes are shown to be skewed and off-set from each other, therefore, a three-cylindric open chain with skewed joint axes is proposed to measure the six displacements between the two reference frames.
  • (12) The axes of these lines converge in a frontal plane on the epiphysis.
  • (13) The experimental results demonstrate that a parallel arrangement of the longitudinal axes of the lateral teeth is formed co-operatively in the dental arch.
  • (14) But he denied having an axe to grind against Riordan, now a Fair Work Commissioner.
  • (15) Measurements of the angle of the gibbus and the angle of intersection of the renal axes were made in 68 children with thoracolumbar meningomyelocele.
  • (16) The crystals are trigonal, space group P3(1)21 with axes a = b = 102.2 A and c = 58.5 A.
  • (17) The mRNAs begin to accumulate during late embryogeny, reach maximal levels in seedling cotyledons, are not detected at significant amounts in leaves, and are distributed similarly in cotyledons and axes of seedlings.
  • (18) In addition, the co-aligned configuration of the ends of the sex-chromosome axes of this species and the lack of silver-stainable threads or filaments connecting them suggest the existence of two mechanisms for association of the sex chromosomes during prophase I and metaphase I: attachment of the ends of both sex chromosome axes to the nuclear envelope and heterochromatin "stickiness."
  • (19) Tomography of the petrous bones showed, in both cases, an upward tilt of the long axes of the bones including their auditory canals, generalized sclerosis of the petrous pyramids and enlargement of the ossicles.
  • (20) Taking the axe to public spending would, they say, allow the chancellor to cut taxes and that would prompt a private sector led recovery.

Halberd


Definition:

  • (n.) An ancient long-handled weapon, of which the head had a point and several long, sharp edges, curved or straight, and sometimes additional points. The heads were sometimes of very elaborate form.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) There was an audible intake of breath as a slide came up showing the base of his skull sliced off by one terrible blow, believed to be from a halberd, a fearsome medieval battle weapon with a razor-sharp iron axe blade weighing about two kilos, mounted on a wooden pole, which was swung at Richard at very close range.
  • (2) The skull lay with the largely undamaged face up – itself a significant and sinister point, according to the experts, hiding the savage blow to the base from a halberd, a fearsome medieval pike-like weapon, which sliced through bone and into the brain and would have killed him in seconds.

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