billhook

noun billhooks · bill-hook · bill hook

1. A medieval polearm, fitted to a long handle, sometimes with an L-shaped tine or a spike protruding from the side or the end of the blade for tackling the opponent; a bill.
2. An agricultural hand tool often with a curved or hooked end to the blade used for pruning or cutting thick, woody plants. I worked very hard in the copse of young ash, with my billhook and a shearing-knife; cutting out the saplings where they stooled too close together, making spars to keep for thatching, wall-crooks to drive into the cob, stiles for close sheep hurdles, and handles for rakes, and hoes, and two-bills,
3. literary, often, as bill hook A part of the knotting mechanism in a reaper-binder or baler (agricultural machinery).
4. rare Rare form of bill hook (“spiked hook used in shops for hanging papers”).
5. rare Rare form of bill hook (“sharply pointed spike on honeyguide hatchlings' mandibles”).

Similar: handbill, pruning hook, hack, hacker, hedging bill, hedging-bill, hedge bill, bill, broom hook, block hook, Yorkshire bill, vine hook

verb billhooks · billhooking · billhooked · bill-hook · bill hook

1. To use a billhook. Toward the end of July, Vatanen took a forestry job. It meant billhooking and chopping excessive undergrowth from the woods on the sandy ridges around Kuhmo and living in a tent with an ever more faithful, almost full- grown hare.