Word.ws English Dictionary

at half-sword

at half-sword adjective: fighting a close fight, closer than a sword's length to one's opponents.

Adjective

at half-sword (not comparable)

  1. (archaic, rare) fighting a close fight, closer than a sword's length to one's opponents.
    • I am a rogue, if I were not at half-sword with a dozen of them two hours together. I have 'scaped by miracle. I am eight times thrust through the doublet, four through the hose; my buckler cut through and through; my sword hack'd like a hand-sawc. 1623, William Shakespeare, The First Part of King Henry the Fourth

Questions about at half-sword

What does at half-sword mean?
At half-sword means fighting a close fight, closer than a sword's length to one's opponents.
What part of speech is at half-sword?
At half-sword is an adjective.

Words near at half-sword in the dictionary

  1. at gaze
  2. at grade
  3. at grass
  4. at grips
  5. at gunpoint
  6. at half-sword
  7. at hand
  8. at haphazard
  9. at heart
  10. at heck and manger
  11. at Her Majesty's pleasure

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: at half-sword (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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