billhook

plural billhooks · alternative bill-hook · alternative bill hook

1. engineeringA medieval polearm, fitted to a long handle, sometimes with an L-shaped tine or a spike protruding from the side or the end of the blade for tackling the opponent; a bill.
2. An agricultural hand tool often with a curved or hooked end to the blade used for pruning or cutting thick, woody plants.

   With a small billhook he carefully freed the collar of the tree from twigs and patches of moss which incrusted it to a height of a foot or two above the ground, an operation comparable to the "little toilet" of the executioner's victim.

   1886 May – 1887 April, Thomas Hardy, “chapter 19”, in The Woodlanders […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London; New York, N.Y.: Macmillan and Co., published 1887, →OCLC

   1 more example

   I worked very hard in the copse of young ash, with my billhook and a shearing-knife; cutting out the saplings where they stooled too close together, making spars to keep for thatching, wall-crooks to drive into the cob, stiles for close sheep hurdles, and handles for rakes, and hoes, and two-bills, of the larger and straighter stuff.

   1869, Richard D. Blackmore, Lorna Doone, chapter 38

3. literaryoftenA part of the knotting mechanism in a reaper-binder or baler (agricultural machinery).
4. rareRare form of bill hook (“spiked hook used in shops for hanging papers”).
5. rareRare form of bill hook (“sharply pointed spike on honeyguide hatchlings' mandibles”).

present singular third person billhooks · participle present billhooking · participle past billhooked · past billhooked · alternative bill-hook · alternative bill hook

1. To use a billhook.

   Toward the end of July, Vatanen took a forestry job. It meant billhooking and chopping excessive undergrowth from the woods on the sandy ridges around Kuhmo and living in a tent with an ever more faithful, almost full- grown hare.

   2010, Arto Paasilinna, The Year of the Hare: A Novel