Word.ws English Dictionary

sheepsfoot

sheepsfoot noun: a printer's tool with a claw at one end for prizing up forms.

Noun

sheepsfoot

  1. (historical) A printer's tool with a claw at one end for prizing up forms.
  2. A blade with one straight edge and one edge which runs parallel for most of the blade's length until it curves abruptly (almost at a right angle) down to a point at the tip, resulting in less of a piercing point than on a Wharncliffe; (loosely) a Wharncliffe.
    • These small blades are quite odd looking, as they don't have a point. The edge of a sheepsfoot blade is commonly straight. The spine is often quite straight, but it suddenly veers almost straight down to meet the edge at the tip.2021 March 5, Jake Welsh, Bladesmithing: A Step-by-Step Guide to Forging Your Own Knives for Beginners, Novelty Publishing LLC, page 36

Forms of sheepsfoot

alternative formsheep's foot

Origin of sheepsfoot

From sheep + -s- + foot.

Questions about sheepsfoot

What does sheepsfoot mean?
Sheepsfoot means a printer's tool with a claw at one end for prizing up forms.
What part of speech is sheepsfoot?
Sheepsfoot is a noun.

Words near sheepsfoot in the dictionary

  1. sheeppen
  2. sheeppox
  3. sheeprun
  4. sheepruns
  5. sheeps
  6. sheepsfoot
  7. sheepshagger
  8. sheepshaggers
  9. sheepshank
  10. sheepshanked
  11. sheepshanking

Source and license

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