(n.) 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.
(n.) Hence, the emblem of judicial vengeance or punishment, or of authority and power.
(n.) Destruction by the sword, or in battle; war; dissension.
(n.) The military power of a country.
(n.) One of the end bars by which the lay of a hand loom is suspended.
Example Sentences:
(1) Everyone is expecting them to win and I think that’s a double-edged sword.
(2) Snipers fired from rooftops, and plainclothes Saleh supporters armed with automatic rifles, swords and batons attacked the protesters.
(3) The Broken King by Philip Womack Photograph: Troika Books The Sword in the Stone begins with Wart on a "quest" to find a tutor.
(4) In his book Swords and Ploughshares, Ashdown gives us two insights.
(5) Its sword-shaped columns tower up almost 100 feet, and grey concrete walls careen around its nearly half-mile circumference.
(6) This was a double-edged sword, for the futebol nation has displayed both the successes of the era and its limits.
(7) His charge sheet includes numerous assaults (one against a waiter who served him the wrong dish of artichokes); jail time for libelling a fellow painter, Giovanni Baglione, by posting poems around Rome accusing him of plagiarism and calling him Giovanni Coglione (“Johnny Bollocks”); affray (a police report records Caravaggio’s response when asked how he came by a wound: “I wounded myself with my own sword when I fell down these stairs.
(8) In a sign that Fox's decision to fall on his sword will not mark the end of the furore engulfing the Tories, both Liberal Democrat and Labour politicians stepped up their demands for the prime minister to explain why several senior members of his cabinet were involved in an Anglo-American organisation apparently at odds with his party's environmental commitments and pledge to defend free healthcare.
(9) If so, ministers may need to be prepared for a new breed of civil servants, who will no longer fall on their swords if they believe they have been stabbed in the back.
(10) This paper will give evidence of the exact wounds that Pizarro received in his final sword fight, as well as a facial sculpture of the skull now identified as that of the conqueror of Peru.
(11) Algeria deserved a better fate than an exit which inevitably will leave big regrets that they missed out on something monumental or unreal, but the national team left the Brazilian World Cup with sword in hand and head high.” In Germany most of the media were just thankful they had progressed.
(12) When you play music like that, it’s like being attacked with knives and swords,” he said.
(13) On the surface of course one can hardly blame them, given the difference in resources on either side – imagine, if you will, how much Arjen Robben or Van Persie would’ve enjoyed themselves had they played an open and adventurous system with designs on putting the Dutch to the sword.
(14) The European Union and the International Monetary Fund had handed enormous power to the Greeks, Parsons argued, just as Theseus handed power to Hippolyta by agreeing to lay down his sword.
(15) Long-term problems remain for new buyers looking to leave the rental market, and Funding for Lending is proving a double-edged sword.
(16) In the end the paper-clip turned out to be mightier than the sword.
(17) We really didn’t want to vote for it, but we made a mistake and now we’re trying to do what’s right and correct it.” But their letter also said while the intent of their vote “was to create a shield for all citizens’ religious liberties, the bill has been mischaracterized by its opponents as a sword for religious intolerance”.
(18) Police were ordered to apologise in person last year to an elderly blind man who was shot with a Taser electronic weapon after they mistook his white stick for a samurai sword.
(19) In subsequent years, armed with his trusty sword, Excalibur (a superannuated prop from John Boorman 's film of the same name), he persistently challenged the law against assembling at Stonehenge, while the site itself grew increasingly to resemble one of the military encampments on nearby Salisbury Plain.
(20) Swords IV was made by professional film-makers, al-Janabi also claims – and independent observers think he might be right.