quarterstaff
English
Alternative forms
Etymology
quarter + staff, attested since about 1550. Probably originally referred to a staff cut from the heartwood of a certain size of tree which was cleft into four parts, per the OED.
Pronunciation
Noun
quarterstaff (plural quarterstaffs or quarterstaves)
- A wooden staff of an approximate length between 2 and 2.5 meters, sometimes tipped with iron, used as a weapon in rural England during the Early Modern period.
- 1600, William Kempe, Kemps nine daies vvonder:
- Name my accuſer ſaith he, or I defye thee Kemp at the quart ſtaffe.
- 1881, Walter Besant, James Rice, “How Kitty First Saw the Doctor”, in The Chaplain of the Fleet , volume I, London: Chatto and Windus, , →OCLC, part I (Within the Rules), page 82:
- [F]ew country people there are who do not love to see two sturdy fellows thwack and belabour each other with quarter-staff, single-stick, or fists.
- Fighting or exercise with the quarterstaff.
- He was very adept at quarterstaff.
- 1883, Howard Pyle, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood , New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons , →OCLC:
- First, several couples stood forth at quarterstaff, and so shrewd were they at the game, and so quickly did they give stroke and parry, that […]
Usage notes
An attestation from 1590 of a quarter Ashe staffe shows that the "quarter" was an apposition and could still be detached (Richard Harvey, Plaine Perceuall the peace-maker of England , cited after the OED). Joseph Swetnam (1615) uses "quarterstaff" in the same sense in which George Silver (1599) had used "short staff", viz. for the staff between about 2 and 2.5 meters in length, as opposed to the "long staff" of a length exceeding 3 meters.
Contemporary use of the word disappears during the 18th century, and beginning with 19th-century Romanticism the word is mostly limited to antiquarian or historical usage.
Synonyms
- bo (a Japanese quarterstaff)
- lathi (an India quarterstaff)
- short staff