sheephook

plural sheephooks

1. crook, a staff used by shepherds

   You then shall for my fake this sheephook keep, Adorn'd with Brass[…]

   a. 1701, John Dryden, The Fifth Eclogue Daphnis

   2 more examples

   O'er both their marks it flew; till fiercely flung From Polypoetes' arm the discus sung: Far as a swain his whirling sheephook throws, That distant falls among the grazing cows, So past them all the rapid circle flies: His friends, while loud applauses shake the skies, With force conjoin'd heave off the weighty prize.

   1720, Alexander Pope, The Iliad of Homer, published 1899

   For the shepherd of that unhappy sheepfold also had climbed up some other way before he knew how to hold a sheephook, till, week after week, the hungry sheep looked up and were not fed.

   1894, Alexander Whyte, Samuel Rutherford