moonsickle

plural moonsickles · alternative moon sickle · alternative moon-sickle

1. poeticA thin crescent of the moon.

   It was a beautiful contrast to see her beside her mistress, like a glittering star in attendance upon the pale and almost vanishing moonsickle.

   1843, L[ydia] M[aria] Child, “Slavery’s Pleasant Homes. A Faithful Sketch.”, in [Maria Weston Chapman], editor, The Liberty Bell, Boston, Mass.: Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Fair, →OCLC, page 148

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   I felt tranquilized while looking at it, as I do when the rosy clouds are fading into gray twilight, and the pale moon-sickle descends slowly behind the dim woods.

   1861 January, L[ydia] Maria Child, “Harriet E. Hosmer. A Biographical Sketch.”, in D[avis] W[asgatt] Clark, editor, The Ladies’ Repository: A Monthly Periodical, Devoted to Literature and Religion, volume XXI, Cincinnati, Oh.: Poe & Hitchcock [et al.], →OCLC, page 4

   Long after dark, when the moonsickle was near setting, two wagons full of old acquaintances from around the little water-front drug store, a few workers at the warehouses and some vets of old Company G like Clyde Winston gathered to charivari the new couple before the wedding tour up to Niagara Falls that the newspaper told about.

   1947, Mari Sandoz, “Skyuglers”, in The Tom-Walker: A New Novel, New York, N.Y.: Dial Press, →OCLC; reprinted as The Tom-Walker: A Novel (Bison Book), Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, August 1984, page 17

   The Jewish month was a lunar month having no less than twenty-nine and no more than thirty days. The first day of the month was determined from the new moon. Of course, the new moon is not visible, but one or two days after the new moon, a faintly glowing moon sickle appears.

   1981, Harold W[alter] Hoehner, “The Day of Christ’s Crucifixion”, in Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ (Contemporary Evangelical Perspectives), Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Publishing House, →ISBN, page 99

   But the woman of leaves and flowers, clad in the shimmering cloak of forest-green, with the silver moonsickle brooch at her shoulder, was no longer with them.

   1985, Moyra Caldecott, The Tower and the Emerald, London: Arrow Books, →ISBN

   So Simeon ben Gamaliel did not fear that a Jew would worship an image of the sun or a moon-sickle on a common object like a water pot, but saw danger in a golden or silver moon-sickle which might be worn as a talisman, as he is quoted in self-explanation in the Gemara.

   1992, Erwin R[amsdell] Goodenough, “Pagan Symbols in Judaism: Astronomical Symbols”, in Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period (Bollingen Series; Mythos), abridged edition, Princeton, N.J.; Oxford: Princeton University Press, →ISBN, page 153

   Synonyms: crescent moon, sickle moon