Log in or Sign up
  1. mattock love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. A digging tool with a flat blade set at right angles to the handle.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. An instrument for loosening the soil in digging, shaped like a pickax, but having its ends broad instead of pointed.

Wiktionary

  1. n. An agricultural tool whose blades are at right angles to the body, similar to a pickax.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. An implement for digging and grubbing. The head has two long steel blades, one like an adz and the other like a narrow ax or the point of a pickax.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. a kind of pick that is used for digging; has a flat blade set at right angles to the handle

Etymologies

  1. From Middle English mattok ("mattock, pickaxe"), from Old English mattuc, meottoc, mettac ("mattock, fork, trident"), from Proto-Germanic *mattukaz (“mattock, ploughshare”), from Proto-Indo-European *matn-, *mat- (“a hoe, ploughshare”). Related to Old High German medela ("plough"), Middle High German metze, metz ("knife"), Latin mateola ("implement for digging in the soil"), Russian мотыга (motýga, "hoe, mattock"), Lithuanian  (matikkas, "mattock"), Sanskrit मत्य (matyà, "harrow, roller, club"). More at mason. (Wiktionary)
  2. Middle English, from Old English mattuc, perhaps from Vulgar Latin *matteūca, club; akin to *mattea; see mace1. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

  • “[320-5] A mattock is a two-bladed instrument for digging.”

    Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8

  • “A mattock is a digging tool that is used to break up soil so that you can shovel it easier.”

    Epinions Recent Content for Home

  • “These new arrivals from the continent renamed the landscape, towns, and many of the rivers in their own tongue so that only a handful of pre-Anglo Saxon British words-such as mattock, brock, bannock-remain in modern English.”

    futureofthebook.com

  • “Matthew needs to get to the bottom line of this Bushian toilet flush: all the American consumer ultimately needs is a mattock, an axe, some seed corn, and an iron pot.”

    Matthew Yglesias » Toyota Idling

  • “Fred Phelps beat his wife and his children with his fists, a leather barber strap, or the wooden handle of a mattock, a tool like an ax.”

    The Huffington Post: Son Leaves 'America's Most Hated Family,' And God, Behind

  • “A mattock and shovel lay by the verge of the grave.”

    The Monastery

  • ““To Corri-nan-shian, Father,” answered the youth. — “Martin and Dan, take pickaxe and mattock, and follow me if you be men!””

    The Monastery

  • “Ravenswood found that the man of the last mattock was absent at a bridal, being fiddler as well as grave-digger to the vicinity.”

    The Bride of Lammermoor

  • “Such trenches are ordinarily extremely deep; a man sweats, digs, toils all night — for it must be done at night; he wets his shirt, burns out his candle, breaks his mattock, and when he arrives at the bottom of the hole, when he lays his hand on the”

    Les Miserables

  • ““Give me your mattock and wait a couple of minutes for me.””

    Les Miserables

Show 10 more examples...

Log in or sign up to add your own related words.

hypernyms (3)

Words that are more generic or abstract

  1. pickax
  1. pickaxe
  1. pick

same context (24)

Words that are found in similar contexts

  1. crowbar
  2. pick-axe
  3. shovel
  4. scythe
  1. sledge-hammer
  2. adz
  3. wheelbarrow
  4. ploughshare
  1. hoe
  2. battle-ax
  3. adze
  4. trowel
  1. hunting-knife
  2. battle-axe
  3. ax
  4. machete
  1. rake
  2. plows
  3. tomahawk
  4. arquebuse
  1. plow
  2. scraper
  3. pitchfork
  4. caliver

reverse dictionary (13)

Words that contain this word in their definition

  1. mathook
  2. grub ax
  1. azadon
  2. bill
  1. pick-mattock
  2. beck
  1. grubbing-hoe
  2. twibill
  1. hack
  2. slate ax
  1. twibil
  2. dolabra
  1. sap

Wordmap

(beta)

Word visualization

Lists

These user-created lists contain the word ‘mattock’.

More lists containing ‘mattock’

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • jennarenn Wordie seems to be well-represented in VA. :D Jul 29, 2008

  • plethora *wince* ouch Jul 29, 2008

  • lyron Just a quick story - we had a mattock in my house in Virginia when I grew up, and it turns out that the metal part at the end of the handle (both blades) fits on the tapered handle in such a way that the only reason it stays at the end is due to the centrifugal force generated when you swing it. So my father was digging something with it (or cutting tree roots or something like that) and so I decided to pick it up and imitate him - I was about 10, so I was pretty weak, and when I picked it up and when I slowly slung it over my head, the whole blade end slid down and smashed the bejeezus out of my hands -


    Jul 29, 2008

  • reesetee Resistance is feudal. Jul 28, 2008

  • chained_bear Ah. I gotcha. Thanks. Jul 25, 2008

  • yarb I suppose I was thinking of a broader sense of peasant, connoting a subservient or lowest socio-economic grouping. Jul 25, 2008

  • chained_bear Umm... I thought the system of feudalism was what created peasants--that you couldn't actually be a peasant without being feudal. Of course i could be wrong... can you enlighten me? Jul 25, 2008

  • yarb In my opinion a peasant can be revolting, but not feudal. Others may differ. Jul 25, 2008

  • chained_bear Cool. I am totally down with revolting feudal peasants. (P.S. is there another kind of revolting peasant?) Jul 25, 2008

  • yarb Along with the pitchfork, the favoured weapon of the revolting feudal peasant. Jul 25, 2008

Tweets

Looking for tweets for mattock.

‘mattock’ has been looked up 1828 times, added to 21 lists, commented on 10 times, and has a Scrabble score of 15.