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1919, R Coltman Clephan, chapter II, in The Tournament: Its Periods and Phases, London: Methuen & Co.,, →OCLC, page 18:
The lance, or glaive as it is often called, of the eleventh and twelfth centuries was quite straight and smooth; a vamplate was added in the fourteenth, small at first but larger later, for the protection of the right arm.
The Welch Glaive is a kind of bill, ſometimes reckoned among the pole axes. They were formerly much in uſe. [...] In the Britiſh Muſeum there is an entry of a warrant, granted to Nicholas Spicer, authoriſing him to impreſs ſmiths for making two thouſand Welch bills or glaives.
With the spear comes the use of the shield; yet the San Cristoval spearmen use no such defence, but turn off spears thrown at them with long curved glaives, and the shields in use in Florida are not made in that island.
At that moment Ilane swung the bladed staff—glaive, Kel remembered as it swung, they called it a glaive—in a wide side cut, slicing one pirate across the chest.
Wherefore do you ſo ill tranſlate yourſelf, / Out of the ſpeech of peace, that bears ſuch grace, / Into the harſh and boiſt'rous tongue of war? / Turning your books to glaives, your ink to blood, / Your pens to lances, and your tongue divine / To a loud trumpet, and a point of war?
In the First Quarto (1600) of the play and in Shakespeare’s First Folio (1623), the word is rendered as graues (graves).
Juſtice were cruel weakly to relent; / From Mercy’s Self ſhe got her ſacred Glaive: / Grace be to thoſe who can, and will, repent; / But Penance long, and dreary, to the Slave, / Who muſt in Floods of Fire his groſs ſoul Spirit lave.
1750, Allan Ramsay, “Hardyknute. A Fragment of an Old Heroic Ballad.”, in The Tea-table Miscellany: Or, A Collection of Choice Songs, Scots and English,, 11th edition, volume I, London: A Millar,, →OCLC, stanza XXI, page 215:
Thus furth he drew his truſty glaive, / While thouſands all arround, / Drawn frae their ſheaths glanſt in the ſun, / And loud the bougills ſound.
a.1908 (date written), Francis Thompson, “ Laus Amara Doloris”, in The Works of Francis Thompson, volume II (Poems), New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, published 1913, →OCLC, page 124:
Yea, that same awful angel with the glaive / Which in disparadising orbit swept / Lintel and pilaster and architrave
^ From Wendelin Boeheim (1890) “Die Glese und die Couse”, in Handbuch der Waffenkunde. Das Waffenwesen in seiner historischen Entwicklung vom Beginn des Mittelalters bis zum Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts [Handbook of Weapon Knowledge. Weaponry in Its Historical Development from the Beginning of the Middle Ages to the End of the 18th Century.] (Seemanns kunstgewerbliche Handbücher; VII), Leipzig: E. A. Seemann, →OCLC, figure 396, pages 343–344.
From Late Latinglavus, representing a hybrid of gladius and clāva(“club”). Alternatively, from an original *glede (from Latingladius) with influence from Gaulishgladebo(“sword”). Both terms are ultimately from Proto-Celtic*kladiwos(“sword”). Alternatively, the d in *glede that had come to be pronounced as /ð/ in Old French may have been fronted to /v/ (perhaps influenced by the Gaulish word). Gender was variable in the oldest texts.
Noun
glaiveoblique singular, m or f (oblique pluralglaives, nominative singularglaives, nominative pluralglaive)
, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, 1899; “glaive, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
