Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun An ancient ax with two blades, one on each side of the handle.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun An ax with an edge or blade on each side of the handle.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun An
axe with anedge orblade on each side of thehandle .
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Quid nunc iungentia mirer aut quid partitis distantia tecta trichoris? quid te, quae mediis seruata penatibus arbor60 tecta per et postis liquidas emergis in auras, quo non sub domino saeuas passura bipennis? et nunc ignaro forsan uel lubrica Nais uel non abruptos tibi demet Hamadryas annos. quid referam alternas gemino super aggere mensas65 albentisque lacus altosque in gurgite fontis? teque, per obliquum penitus quae laberis amnem,
A Villa at Tibur 1912
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The axes were fashioned in the old shapes of the age of bronze, were not of the _bipennis_ Mycenaean model -- the double axe -- nor of the shape of the letter D, very thick, with two round apertures in the blade, like the bronze axe of Vaphio.
Homer and His Age Andrew Lang 1878
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Some were made with two blades, like the _bipennis_ of the Romans. and the _labra_ of the Lydians and Carians; others more nearly resembled the weapons used by our own knights in the middle ages, having a single blade, and a mere ornamental point on the other side of the haft.
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We have ‘twilight’, but ‘twibill’ = bipennis (Chapman) is extinct.
English Past and Present Richard Chenevix Trench 1846
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The first represents a combination of two warlike implements on one handle -- the upper one an axe, the lower a bipennis.
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Opusculum hoc, Halberdarie amplissime, in lucem proferre hactenus distuli, judicii tui acumen subveritus magis quam bipennis.
Lives of the Poets, Volume 1 Samuel Johnson 1746
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The peculiar offensive weapons of the inhabitants of Y\sia were the bipennis, or double battle-axe, the club, and the bow and arrow, generally carried in two different parti - tions of the same case or quiver.
Costume of the ancients Hope, Thomas, 1770?-1831 1812
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'wing', but Quintilian clearly took _penna_ as the correct spelling for this sense: 'quare [' therefore '] discat puer ... quae cum quibus cognatio; nec miretur cur ... a pinno quod est acutum [_sc_ fiat] securis utrimque habens aciem _bipennis_, ne illorum sequatur errorem qui, quia
The Last Poems of Ovid 43 BC-18? Ovid
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