See Also: sickle(dictionary)
Sickle(medicine)
sickle(dictionary)
hammer and sickle(dictionary)
sickle-cell(dictionary)
sickle scotoma(medicine)
sickle form(medicine)
sickle flap(medicine)
Sickle - Poker(gambling)
haemoglobin, sickle(medicine)

sickle (iou)



sickle noun & verb.
[Old English sicol, sicel = Middle Low German, Middle Dutch sekele, sikele (Dutch sikkel), Old High German sichila (German Sichel), from var. of Latin secula (cf. Italian segolo pruning-hook), from secare cut.]
A. noun.
A short-handled farming implement with a crescent-shaped usu. serrated blade, used for cutting grain, lopping and trimming. OE.
hammer and sickle: see HAMMER noun.
J. Bronowski That sawing motion of the sickle that reapers have used for..ten thousand years.
A thing resembling a sickle in shape; spec. (a) poet. the crescent moon; (b) (Sickle.) a conspicuous group of stars in the constellation Leo. LME.
Longfellow The blue Salernian bay With its sickle of white sand.
Comb.: sickle-bill any of various birds with long narrow curved bills; spec. either of two hummingbirds of the genus Eutoxeres; sickle-feather each of the long middle feathers on the tail of a cock; sickle hock an unusually bent hock, considered a defect in horses, cattle, etc., but desirable in a running hound; sickle medick a medick with sickle-shaped pods, Medicago falcata, allied to lucerne but with yellow flowers; sicklepod a N. American leguminous plant, Cassia tora, with long sickle-shaped pods; sickle scaler an instrument with a curved blade for removing scale from teeth.
b. verb.
a. verb intrans. Cut grain with a sickle; reap. Chiefly as sickling verbal noun. Now rare. OE.
b. verb trans. Cut with a sickle. E20.
Medicine.
a. verb intrans. Of red blood cells: become crescent- or sickle-shaped. Of blood: develop cells of this shape. E20.
b. verb trans. Cause to sickle. L20.
sickled adjective (a) rare cut with a sickle; (b) Medicine (of a red blood cell) sickle-shaped: M18.
sickler noun (a) a person who uses a sickle; (b) Medicine a person with sickle-cell anaemia or with sickle-cell trait: M17.