Word.ws English Dictionary

sharp end

sharp end noun: the bow of a ship.

Noun

sharp end (plural sharp ends)

  1. (informal) The bow of a ship.
  2. (figuratively) The most difficult or dangerous aspect of something.
    • to be on/at the sharp end of something
    • to get the sharp end
  3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see sharp, end.
    • Brutus did n't^([sic]) worry after he heard that his wife took a few hot coals. He called a servant and ran straight into his sword starting at the sharp end.1905 September, “A School Comment on Shake-Speare's Julius Cæsar”, in The Atlantic

Examples of sharp end in a sentence

  • North Queensland is just at the sharp end.2019 May 21, Jason Wilson, “North Queensland is just at the sharp end of what’s happening across Australia”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:
  • India is at the sharp end of this predicament.2022 May 8, Bill Spindle, “The World Has No Choice but to Care About India’s Heat Wave”, in The Atlantic:

Forms of sharp end

pluralsharp ends

Questions about sharp end

What does sharp end mean?
Sharp end means the bow of a ship.
How do you use sharp end in a sentence?
North Queensland is just at the sharp end.
What part of speech is sharp end?
Sharp end is a noun.
What is the plural of sharp end?
The plural of sharp end is sharp ends.

Words near sharp end in the dictionary

  1. sharp cedars
  2. sharp cookie
  3. sharp cookies
  4. Sharp County
  5. sharp elbows
  6. sharp end
  7. sharp end of one's tongue
  8. sharp ends
  9. sharp power
  10. sharp practice
  11. sharp practices

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sharp end (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: “sharp end.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sharp_end. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.