Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The flat cutting part of a sharpened weapon or tool.
  • noun A sword.
  • noun A swordsman.
  • noun Archaeology A slender, sharp-edged flake that is at least twice as long as it is wide.
  • noun A dashing youth.
  • noun A flat thin part or section, especially one that makes contact to perform a desired action.
  • noun An arm of a rotating mechanism.
  • noun A long, thin, often curved piece, as of metal or rubber, used for plowing, clearing, or wiping.
  • noun The metal runner of an ice skate.
  • noun A wide flat bone or bony part.
  • noun The flat upper surface of the tongue just behind the tip.
  • noun The expanded part of a leaf or petal.
  • noun The leaf of grasses or similar plants.
  • intransitive verb To skate on in-line skates.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The leaf of a plant, particularly (now perhaps exclusively) of gramineous plants; also, the young stalk or spire of gramineous plants.
  • noun Tn botany, the lamina or broad part of a leaf, petal, sepal, etc., as distinguished from the petiole or footstalk. See cut under leaf.
  • noun Anything resembling a blade.
  • noun A dashing or rollicking fellow; a swaggerer; a rakish fellow; strictly, perhaps, one who is sharp and wide awake: as, “jolly blades,”
  • noun One of the principal rafters of a roof.
  • To take off the blades of (herbs).
  • To furnish with a blade; fit a blade to.
  • To come into blade; produce blades.
  • noun That part of an iron head of a golf-club which forms the face or striking-surface.
  • noun The broad part of a cricket-bat.
  • noun A swords-man.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To furnish with a blade.
  • intransitive verb To put forth or have a blade.
  • noun Properly, the leaf, or flat part of the leaf, of any plant, especially of gramineous plants. The term is sometimes applied to the spire of grasses.
  • noun The cutting part of an instrument.
  • noun The broad part of an oar; also, one of the projecting arms of a screw propeller.
  • noun The scapula or shoulder blade.
  • noun (Arch.) The principal rafters of a roof.
  • noun (Com.) The four large shell plates on the sides, and the five large ones of the middle, of the carapace of the sea turtle, which yield the best tortoise shell.
  • noun A sharp-witted, dashing, wild, or reckless, fellow; -- a word of somewhat indefinite meaning.
  • noun The flat part of the tongue immediately behind the tip, or point.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The sharp cutting edge of a knife, chisel, or other tool, a razor blade.
  • noun The flat functional end of a propeller, oar, hockey stick, screwdriver, skate, etc.
  • noun The narrow leaf of a grass or cereal.
  • noun botany The thin, flat part of a plant leaf, attached to a stem (petiole). The lamina.
  • noun A flat bone, especially the shoulder blade.
  • noun A cut of beef from near the shoulder blade (part of the chuck).
  • noun The flat part of the tongue.
  • noun poetic A sword or knife.
  • noun archaeology A piece of prepared, sharp-edged stone, often flint, at least twice as long as it is wide; a long flake of ground-edge stone or knapped vitreous stone.
  • noun A throw characterized by a tight parabolic trajectory due to a steep lateral attitude.
  • noun sailing The rudder, daggerboard, or centerboard of a vessel.
  • noun A bulldozer or surface-grading machine with mechanically adjustable blade that is nominally perpendicular to the forward motion of the vehicle.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old English blæd; see bhel- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old English blæd ("leaf"), from Proto-Germanic *bladan, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰlh̥₃oto (compare Irish bláth ("flower"), Tocharian A pält, Tocharian B pilta ("leaf"), Albanian fletë ("leaf")), from *bʰleh₃- (“to thrive, bloom”). Similar usage in Sägeblatt ("saw leaf"), the German term for a saw blade. More at blow.

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