sword

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A weapon consisting typically of a long, straight or slightly curved, pointed blade having one or two cutting edges and set into a hilt.
2. n. An instrument of death or destruction.
3. n. The use of force, as in war.
4. n. Military power or jurisdiction.
5. idiom. at swords' points Ready for a fight.
6. idiom. put to the sword To kill; slay.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. An offensive weapon consisting of an edged blade fixed in a hilt composed of a grip, a guard, and a pommel. See hilt. The sword is usually carried in a scabbard, and in the belt or hanging from the belt (see belt, hanger, carriage), but sometimes in a baldric, or, as in the middle ages, secured to the armor. The word includes weapons with straight, slightly curved, and much-curved blades; weapons with one or two edges, or triangular in section; the blunt or unpointed weapons used in the tourney, which were sometimes even of whalebone; and the modern schläger. But, in contradistinction to the saber, the sword is specifically considered as double-edged, or as used for the point only, and therefore having no serviceable edge. See broadsword, claymore, rapier, and cuts under saber, second, simitar, and tourney-sword.
2. n. Figuratively, the power of the sword—that is, the power of sovereignty, implying overruling justice rather than military force.
3. n. Specifically, military force or power, whether in the sense of reserved strength or of active warfare; also, the military profession; the profession of arms; arms generally.
4. n. The cause of death or destruction.
5. n. Conflict; war.
6. n. Any utensil or tool somewhat resembling a sword in form or in use, as a swingle used in flax-dressing.
7. n. The prolonged snout of a swordfish or a sawfish.
8. n. A light sword used for modern fencing with the point only, introduced about the middle of the seventeenth century and replacing, about 1700, all other blades except the heavy saber used in warfare. The small sword proper has a blade of triangular section, usually concave on each of the three sides, so as to be extremely light in proportion to its rigidity, and its hilt is usually without quillons, but has always a knuckle-bow and usually two shells.
9. To strike or slash with a sword.
10. n. Another spelling of sward.
11. n. One of the standards upon which oscillates the slay or lathe of a loom.
12. n. A bar or blade, in a measuring-machine, upon which cloths are rolled or wound.

Wiktionary

1. n. weaponry A long-bladed weapon having a handle and sometimes a hilt and designed to stab, cut or slash.
2. n. Someone paid to handle a sword.
3. n. tarot A suit in the minor arcana in tarot.
4. n. tarot A card of this suit.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. An offensive weapon, having a long and usually sharp-pointed blade with a cutting edge or edges. It is the general term, including the small sword, rapier, saber, scimiter, and many other varieties.
2. n. Hence, the emblem of judicial vengeance or punishment, or of authority and power.
3. n. Destruction by the sword, or in battle; war; dissension.
4. n. The military power of a country.
5. n. (Weaving) One of the end bars by which the lay of a hand loom is suspended.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a cutting or thrusting weapon that has a long metal blade and a hilt with a hand guard