Noun: scythe
| Singular | scythe |
| Plural | scythes |
Sample Sentences
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And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence
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Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence. [1609, William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 12”, in Shake-speares Sonnets. […], London: By G[eorge] Eld for T[homas] T[horpe] and are to be sold by William Aspley, →OCLC:]
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Early next morning the gudewife took a scythe on her shoulder, and went out in the fields with the hay-mowers to mow. [1886, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 41:]
Nouns inflected like scythe
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
1. From Middle English sythe, sithe, from Old English sīþe, sīgþe, sigdi (“sickle”), from Proto-West Germanic *sigiþi, from Proto-Germanic *sigiþiz, *sigiþō, derived from *seg- (“saw”), from Proto-Indo-European *sek- (“to cut”).
2. Immediate Germanic cognates include Middle Low German sēgede, Dutch zicht, Icelandic sigð (all “sickle”). More distantly related with Dutch zeis, German Sense (both “scythe”). Also akin to English saw, which see.
3. The silent c crept in during the early 15th century owing to folk-etymological association with Medieval Latin scissor (“tailor, carver”), from Latin scindō (“to cut, rend, split”).
4. The verb, which was first used in the intransitive sense, is from the noun. See: Middle English Nouns '
sythe', Old English Nouns '
sīþe', Dutch Nouns '
zicht', Icelandic Nouns '
sigð', Dutch Nouns '
zeis', German Nouns '
Sense'.
Verbs referencing "scythe"
Dutch Nouns
zeis, Dutch Nouns
zichte.