scythe
/ˈsaɪð/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.78 in modern English
14
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
1
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence."
- "Early next morning the gudewife took a scythe on her shoulder, and went out in the fields with the hay-mowers to mow."
- "The boy began to keen, and the high-pitched noise scythed through Song's head."
- "The smaller shells make a complete slaughterhouse of the bridge, and the splinters scythe through anyone out on deck."
Etymology
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”). 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. 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”). The verb, which was first used in the intransitive sense, is from the noun.