from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- n. Archaic form of gisarme.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- n. A weapon with a scythe-shaped blade, and a separate long sharp point, mounted on a long staff and carried by foot soldiers.
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. See guisarme.
Sorry, no etymologies found.
And then he looked afore him, and there he apperceived and saw come an armed knight, with many lights about him; and this knight had a long gisarm in his hand, and made grim countenance to smite him.
The usual lance had not been included in the list of arms, the hand-gisarm being substituted in its place.
They consisted of the long sword, the short sword, the dagger, the mace, and a weapon known as the hand-gisarm, or glave-lot -- a heavy swordlike blade eight palms long, a palm in breadth, and riveted to a stout handle of wood three feet long.
The other struggled to thrust him away, but Myles, letting go the gisarm, which he held with his left hand, clutched him tightly by the sword-belt in the intense, vise-like grip of despair.
In vain the Earl strove to beat him loose with the shaft of the gisarm, in vain he spurred and reared his horse to shake him off; Myles held him tight, in spite of all his struggles.
"Nay, look, saw ye him pass the point of the gisarm?"
Once more the Earl of Alban raised the gisarm, swinging it twice around his head before he struck.
He sat as still as a rock, holding his gisarm poised in front of him.
In the battle which followed, Myles fought with the long sword, the Earl with the hand-gisarm for which he had asked.
When Myles opened his eyes after that moment of stunning silence, it was to see the other looming above him on his war-horse, swinging his gisarm for one last mortal blow -- pitiless, merciless.