Definition of "sword" []

• A weapon consisting typically of a long, straight or slightly curved, pointed blade having one or two cutting edges and set into a hilt. (noun)
• An instrument of death or destruction. (noun)
• The use of force, as in war. (noun)
• Military power or jurisdiction. (noun)
• At swords' points Ready for a fight. (idiom)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "A sword is not, however, in virtue of the meaning of the word ˜sword™, a phase of anything, and to use the term to name a phase of something in a given case, when it suits, is ad hoc."
• "God's justice also is seen in political government, who will have manifest wickednesses to be punished by magistrates; and when they that rule punish not the guilty, God himself wonderfully draws them to punishment, and regularly punishes heinous faults with heinous penalties in this life, as it is said, _He that takes the sword shall perish by the sword_; and, _Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge_."
• "I. i.82 (9,7) Give me my long sword] The _long sword_ was the sword used in war, which was sometimes wielded with both hands."