Word.ws English Dictionary

quarterstaves

quarterstaves is the plural of quarterstaff.

Meaning of quarterstaff

Noun

quarterstaff (plural quarterstaffs or quarterstaves)

  1. A wooden staff with an approximate length between 2 and 2.5 meters, sometimes tipped with iron, used as a weapon in rural England during the Early Modern period.
    • Name my accuſer ſaith he, or I defye thee Kemp at the quart ſtaffe.1600, William Kempe, Kemps nine daies vvonder
  2. Fighting or exercise with a wooden staff of this sort.
    • He was very adept at quarterstaff.

Questions about quarterstaves

What is quarterstaves the plural of?
Quarterstaves is the plural of quarterstaff.

Words near quarterstaves in the dictionary

  1. quartersawing
  2. quartersawn
  3. quartersaws
  4. quarterstaff
  5. quarterstaffs
  6. quarterstaves
  7. quartertime
  8. quartertimes
  9. quartertone
  10. quartertones
  11. quarterwave

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: quarterstaves (page history and authors); quarterstaff (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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Cite this entry: “quarterstaves.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/quarterstaves. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.