Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A three-pronged spear used in fishing.
  • transitive verb To spear (a fish) with a leister.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A barbed spear having three or more prongs, for striking and taking fish; a salmon-spear. Also called waster.
  • To strike or take with a leister.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Scotland A spear armed with three or more prongs, for striking fish.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun a spear armed with three or more barbed prongs for catching fish

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a spear with three or more prongs; used for spearing fish (especially salmon)

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Probably from Old Norse ljōstr, from ljōsta, to strike; see leu- in Indo-European roots.]

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Examples

  • It does not fall to the lot of all men to handle with equal dexterity the brush, the pen, and the rod -- to say nothing of the rifle -- still less of the leister, under cloud of night.

    Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 333, July 1843 Various

  • This leister (or waster) was cast by hand at fish lying in not too deep water -- generally, in fact, when they were on the spawning beds.

    Stories of the Border Marches Jeanie Lang

  • It, too, had five single-barbed prongs, but these were all of equal length, and the wooden handle of this implement was straight, and very much longer than that of the throwing leister; sixteen feet was no unusual length for the handle of the former weapon.

    Stories of the Border Marches Jeanie Lang

  • Bait fishing for salmon, and the darker, though torch-illumined, mysteries of the leister, occupy the terminal chapters.

    Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 333, July 1843 Various

  • Now this clodding waster (or leister) was a possession of which Tam was inordinately proud; amongst his friends its temper and penetrating power were proverbial.

    Stories of the Border Marches Jeanie Lang

  • Nevertheless, there was in that, too, a strong element of excitement, for the weapon used, the clodding or throwing leister, required no mean skill in the using.

    Stories of the Border Marches Jeanie Lang

  • Yet when anon he came to cast this leister at the muckle kipper, "the 14 lb. waster stottit off his back as if he had been a bag o 'wool."

    Stories of the Border Marches Jeanie Lang

  • The leister used in "sunning" or in "burning the water" differed somewhat in shape from the weapon with which Tam Purdie secured his big kipper.

    Stories of the Border Marches Jeanie Lang

  • This throwing leister was a heavy spear, or rather a heavy "graip," having five single-barbed prongs of unequal length but regularly graduated.

    Stories of the Border Marches Jeanie Lang

  • A three-tae'd leister on the ither [- toed fish-spear]

    Robert Burns How To Know Him William Allan Neilson 1907

Comments

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  • " ... the vinegared

    and leistered sealed in tins, delicious with saltines,"

    "The Sink" by Catherine Bowman in The New Yorker, June 28, 2010, p 36

    July 14, 2010