The story
- French · calque ofbec de corbin
- English todaycrowbill
From crow (“bird of the genus Corvus”) + bill (“beak of a bird”). Sense 1 (“kind of forceps”) is probably from its appearance, while sense 2 (“type of poleaxe”) is a calque of French bec de corbin (literally “crow or raven's beak”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.