spear

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A weapon consisting of a long shaft with a sharply pointed end.
2. n. A shaft with a sharp point and barbs for spearing fish.
3. n. A soldier armed with a spear.
4. v. To pierce with or as if with a spear.
5. v. To catch with a thrust of the arm: spear a football.
6. v. Football To block (an opponent) by ramming with the helmet, in violation of the rules.
7. v. Sports To jab (an opponent) with the blade of a hockey stick, in violation of the rules.
8. v. To stab at something with or as if with a spear.
9. n. A slender stalk, as of asparagus.
10. v. To sprout like a spear.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A weapon consisting of a penetrating head attached to a long shaft of wood, designed to be thrust by or launched from the hand at an enemy or at game. Spears have been used as warlike weapons from the earliest times, and were the principal reliance of many ancient armies, as those of the Greeks, while in others they were used coördinately with the bow and the sword. They are represented by the bayonet in modern armies, though some use is still made of spears, of which javelins and lances are lighter, and pikes heavier, forms. Compare cuts under bayonet and pike.
2. n. A man armed with a spear; a spearman.
3. n. A sharp-pointed instrument with barbed tines, generally three or four, used for stabbing fish and other animals; a fish-gig.
4. n. An instrument like or suggestive of an actual spear, as some articles of domestic or mechanical use, one of the long pieces fixed transversely to the beam or body of chevaux-de-frise, in some parts of England a bee's sting, etc.
5. n. One of the pieces of timber which together form the main rod of the Cornish pumping-engine.
6. n. The feather of a horse. Also called the streak of the spear. It is a mark in the neck or near the shoulder of some barbs, which is reckoned a sure sign of a good horse.
7. n. A spire: now used only of the stalks of grasses: as, a spear of wheat.
8. To pierce or strike with a spear or similar weapon: as, to spear fish.
9. To shoot into a long stem; germinate, as barley. See spire.
10. An obsolete form of speer.

Wiktionary

1. n. A long stick with a sharp tip used as a weapon for throwing or thrusting, or anything used to make a thrusting motion.
2. n. A soldier armed with such a weapon; a spearman.
3. n. A sharp tool used by fishermen to retrieve fish.
4. n. ice hockey an illegal maneuver using the end of a hockey stick to strike into another hockey player.
5. n. wrestling a running tackle on an opponent performed in professional wrestling.
6. n. A long, thin strip from a vegetable.
7. v. To penetrate or strike with, or as if with, any long narrow object. To make a thrusting motion that catches an object on the tip of a long device.
8. v. intransitive To shoot into a long stem, as some plants do.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A long, pointed weapon, used in war and hunting, by thrusting or throwing; a weapon with a long shaft and a sharp head or blade; a lance.
2. n. Fig.: A spearman.
3. n. A sharp-pointed instrument with barbs, used for stabbing fish and other animals.
4. n. A shoot, as of grass; a spire.
5. n. The feather of a horse. See Feather, n., 4.
6. n. The rod to which the bucket, or plunger, of a pump is attached; a pump rod.
7. v. To pierce with a spear; to kill with a spear.
8. v. To shoot into a long stem, as some plants. See spire.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a long pointed rod used as a tool or weapon
2. v. pierce with a spear
3. v. thrust up like a spear
4. n. an implement with a shaft and barbed point used for catching fish