blade

Meanings

Noun

• The sharp cutting edge of a knife, chisel, or other tool, a razor blade/sword.
• The flat functional end of a propeller, oar, hockey stick, screwdriver, skate, etc.
• The narrow leaf of a grass or cereal.
• The thin, flat part of a plant leaf, attached to a stem (petiole). The lamina.
• A flat bone, especially the shoulder blade.
• A cut of beef from near the shoulder blade (part of the chuck).
• The part of the tongue just behind the tip, used to make laminal consonants.
• A sword or knife.
• 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.
• A throw characterized by a tight parabolic trajectory due to a steep lateral attitude.
• The rudder, daggerboard, or centerboard of a vessel.
• A bulldozer or surface-grading machine with mechanically adjustable blade that is nominally perpendicular to the forward motion of the vehicle.
• A dashing young man.
• A homosexual, usually male.
• Thin plate, foil.
• One of a series of small plates that make up the aperture or the shutter of a camera.
• The principal rafters of a roof.
• 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.
• A blade server.
• Synonym of knifeblade
• An exterior product of vectors. (The product may have more than two factors. Also, a scalar counts as a 0-blade, a vector as a 1-blade; an exterior product of k vectors may be called a k-blade.)
• The part of a key that is inserted into the lock.

Verb

• To skate on rollerblades.
• To furnish with a blade.
• To put forth or have a blade.
• To stab with a blade
• To cut (a person) so as to provoke bleeding.

Origin

• From Middle English blade, blad, from Old English blæd ("leaf"), from Proto-West Germanic *blad, from Proto-Germanic *bladą, from Proto-Indo-European, from *bʰleh₃-
• See also West Frisian bled, Dutch blad, German Blatt, Danish blad, Irish bláth ("flower"), Welsh blodyn ("flower"), Tocharian A pält, Tocharian B pilta ("leaf"), Albanian fletë ("leaf"). Similar usage in Sägeblatt. blat. More at blow.