snathe

present singular third person snathes · participle present snathing · participle past snathed · past snathed

1. UKarchaicTo lop; to prune.
2. To snatch.

   The fair dame was able to snathe the best candidates— She pathed good souls to the noble way and educates.

   2013, Percarus, Percarus

   2 more examples

   Meleager's mother mad at his offence In that death by his hand had summon'd thence Her Brothers: snathes up the fatall brand which she , which did his life command, And on a flagrant altar it she layes, The which consuming her sons life betray's.

   1924, John Milton, Some Newly Discovered Stanzas, page 149

   To be out, ready to snathe a salmon or to blind a pheasant on his perch, and all the time to know that there was a certain element of risk, that unless you remained all the time conscious of this risk you might be jumped on by one of the Finnertys, made your blood course faster through your veins and made your heart thump heavily, so that when you did reach home you sank into a heavy exhausted sleep immediately, and woke in the morning wondering what the hell you wanted to be doing things like that for.

   2016, Walter Macken, Quench the Moon

plural snathes

1. alternativeAlternative form of snath (“shaft of a scythe”).

   The resulting scythe is heavier and more difficult to use than a bent snathe.

   2022, Michael Brown, Guide to Medieval Gardens: Gardens in the Age of Chivalry

   2 more examples

   Before the patent of Peirce, the nibs of scythes had been clumsily fastened to the snathe by means of an iron ring, tightened by wedges.

   1841, The Law Reporter - Volume 3, page 384

   Mine is an old ridge-backed twenty-eight-inch blade that I inherited with the place and set on a new snathe.

   2011, Roderick L. Haig-Brown, Measure of the Year