celt

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A common prehistoric tool of stone or metal, shaped like a chisel or ax head.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A member of one of the peoples speaking languages akin to those of Wales, Ireland, the Highlands of Scotland, and Brittany, and constituting a branch or principal division of the Indo-European family. Formerly these peoples occupied, partly or wholly, France, Spain, northern Italy, the western parts of Germany, and the British islands. Of the remaining Celtic languages and peoples there are two chief divisions, viz., the Gadhelic, comprising the Highlanders of Scotland, the Irish, and the Manx, and the Cymric, comprising the Welsh and Bretons; the Cornish, of Cornwall, related to the latter, is only recently extinct.
2. n. In archaeology, an implement or weapon widely used among primitive and uncivilized races, and having the general form of chisel or an ax-blade. In the eighteenth century the name was given to the stone and bronze implements of this general shape, without careful consideration of their probable uses. The stone celts are all of a form more or less closely resembling the head of a hatchet, differing only in being sometimes fiatter and with a longer cutting edge, sometimes of a section nearly circular, pointed at one end, and coming abruptly to an edge at the other. The bronze celts, the forms of which are very varied, may be divided into three principal classes: First, chisel-shaped blades without sockets, but with raised rims on each side forming a pair of grooves, apparently intended to retain a wooden handle fitted on in the direction of the length of the blade; these may be considered as spades intended for agricultural labor. Second, chisel-shaped blades, having a deep socket at the end opposite the cutting edge, and usually fitted with a loop or pierced ear on one side. Third, blades, also with a socket, but shorter and broader; these, which have often been called ax-heads, are thought rather to be ferrules for the butt-end of spear-shafts and the like, the edge enabling them to be driven into the ground. See amgarn, paal-stab, pot-celt, and socket-celt.

Wiktionary

1. n. a prehistoric chisel-bladed tool

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. One of an ancient race of people, who formerly inhabited a great part of Central and Western Europe, and whose descendants at the present day occupy Ireland, Wales, the Highlands of Scotland, and the northern shores of France.
2. n. (Archæol.) A weapon or implement of stone or metal, found in the tumuli, or barrows, of the early Celtic nations.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a member of a European people who once occupied Britain and Spain and Gaul prior to Roman times