quarterstaff
(noun) a long stout staff used as a weapon
Source: WordNet® 3.1
quarterstaff (plural quarterstaffs or quarterstaves)
A wooden staff of an approximate length between 2 and 2.5 meters, sometimes tipped with iron, used as a weapon in rural England during the Early Modern period.
Fighting or exercise with the quarterstaff.
An attestation from 1590 of a quarter Ashe staffe shows that the "quarter" was an apposition and could still be detached (Richard Harvey, Plaine Perceuall the peace-maker of England , cited after the OED). Joseph Swetnam (1615) uses "quarterstaff" in the same sense in which George Silver (1599) had used "short staff", viz. for the staff between about 2 and 2.5 meters in length, as opposed to the "long staff" of a length exceeding 3 meters.
Contemporary use of the word disappears during the 18th century, and beginning with 19th-century Romanticism the word is mostly limited to antiquarian or historical usage.
• bo (a Japanese quarterstaff)
• short staff
Source: Wiktionary
Quar"ter*staff`, n.; pl. Quarterstaves (.
Definition: A long and stout staff formerly used as a weapon of defense and offense; -- so called because in holding it one hand was placed in the middle, and the other between the middle and the end.
Source: Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary 1913 Edition
27 April 2025
(adjective) not quite exact or correct; “the approximate time was 10 o’clock”; “a rough guess”; “a ballpark estimate”
The word “coffee” entered the English language in 1582 via the Dutch “koffie,” borrowed from the Ottoman Turkish “kahve,” borrowed in turn from the Arabic “qahwah.” The Arabic word qahwah was traditionally held to refer to a type of wine.
