Also spearhead. [f. SPEAR sb.1]
1. The sharp-pointed head or blade forming the striking or piercing end of a spear.
c. 1400. Maundev. (Roxb.), ii. 6. Ane of þe nayles, and þe spere heued, and many oþer reliques er in Fraunce.
c. 1400. Laud Troy Bk., 17106. Thei were alle In mochel doute How the spere-hed scholde gon oute With-oute lesyng of his lyff.
c. 1445. Lydg., Nightingale, II. 158. Thurgh myn hert the sperhed gan it dresse.
1503. Acc. Ld. High Treas. Scot., II. 202. For ane sper hede gilt, xxviij s.
1523. Fitzherb., Husb., § 54. Ther is a grasse called sperewort, and hath a long narowe leafe, lyke a spere-heed.
1610. Holland, Camden’s Brit. (1637), 188. They found Spear-heads, axes, and swords of brasse.
1638. Junius, Paint. Ancients, 319–20. Others do but shew their halfe bodies,… their head-pieces, their spear-heads.
1778. Eng. Gazetteer (ed. 2), s.v. Tamworth, A large trench remains … where bones of men and horses, and spear-heads, have been dug up.
1825. Scott, Talism., xxviii. His lance … shivered into splinters from the steel spear-head up to the very gauntlet.
1883. in Fisheries Japan (Fish. Exhib.), 35. A long bamboo rod … which is tipped at the extremity with an iron-barbed spear-head.
fig. 1893. in J. H. Barrow, World’s Parlt. Relig., II. 1540. The Scriptures were to be the spear-head, all other knowledge the well-fitted handle.
2. transf. A thing having the pointed form characteristic of the head of a spear.
1894. Conan Doyle, S. Holmes, 33. The sticky spearheads of the chestnuts were just beginning to burst into their five-fold leaves.
1897. Quiller-Couch, Stevenson’s St. Ives, xxxiii. Yonder was England, with the Solway cleaving the coast—a broad, bright spearhead, slightly bent at the tip.
3. attrib. and Comb., as spear-head form, -shaped.
1865. Lubbock, Preh. Times, ix. 274. A weathered hatchet … identical in form with the spearhead-shaped specimens from Amiens.
1897. Mary Kingsley, W. Africa, 324. The Fan decorates the bellows with spearhead forms, the points whereof are directed towards the fire.
