Definitions

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

  • noun A short pointed weapon with sharp edges.
  • noun Something that agonizes, torments, or wounds.
  • noun A double dagger.
  • idiom (look daggers at) To glare at angrily or hatefully.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In ship-building, any timber lying diagonally.
  • To pierce with a dagger; stab.
  • To provide with a dagger.
  • To dagger arms. See arm.
  • noun An edged and pointed weapon for thrusting, shorter than a sword, and used, commonly in connection with the rapier, by swordsmen in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, held in the left hand to parry the thrust of an adversary's rapier.
  • noun Any straight stabbing-weapon, as the dirk, poniard, stiletto, etc.
  • noun In printing, an obelisk; a mark of reference in the form of a dagger, thus: .
  • noun In entomology, the popular name of several noctuid moths of the genus Acronycta: so called from a black dagger-like mark near the inner angle of the fore wings.
  • noun In Sollas's nomenclature of sponge-spicules, a form of the sexradiate spicule resulting from reduction of the distal ray and great development of the proximal ray.
  • noun plural In botany: The sword-grass, Phalaris arundinacea, or perhaps Poa aquatica.
  • noun The yellow flag, Iris Pseudacorus.
  • noun Dagger of lath
  • noun Double dagger

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

  • transitive verb obsolete To pierce with a dagger; to stab.
  • noun A short weapon used for stabbing. This is the general term: cf. poniard, stiletto, bowie knife, dirk, misericorde, anlace.
  • noun (Print.) A mark of reference in the form of a dagger [†]. It is the second in order when more than one reference occurs on a page; -- called also obelisk.
  • noun (Zoöl.) any moth of the genus Apatalea. The larvæ are often destructive to the foliage of fruit trees, etc.
  • noun the wooden weapon given to the Vice in the old Moralities.
  • noun a mark of reference [‡] which comes next in order after the dagger.
  • noun to look or speak fiercely or reproachfully.
  • noun A timber placed diagonally in a ship's frame.

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

  • noun weapon A stabbing weapon, similar to a sword but with a short, double-edged blade.
  • noun The text character ().
  • noun A timber placed diagonally in a ship's frame.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a character used in printing to indicate a cross reference or footnote
  • noun a short knife with a pointed blade used for piercing or stabbing

Etymologies

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

[Middle English daggere, alteration of Old French dague, from Old Provençal dague or Old Italian daga, both perhaps from Vulgar Latin *dāca (ēnsis), Dacian (knife), from feminine of Latin Dācus.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Related to Old French dague (13th century), Occitan, Italian, Spanish daga, German Degen, Middle Low German dagge ("knife's point"), Old Norse daggardr, Welsh dager, dagr, Breton dac, Albanian thikë ("a knife, dagger"), thek ("to stab, to pierce with a sharp object").

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Perhaps from diagonal.

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Examples

Comments

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  • in punctuation, this is also known as 'obelisk'.

    April 23, 2008