"Unmannerd dog! stand thou, when I command: Advance thy halbert higher than my breast, Or, by Saint Paul, Ill strike thee to my foot, And spurn upon thee, beggar, for thy boldness."
A polearm or pole weapon is a close combat weapon in which the main fighting part of the weapon is fitted to the end of a long shaft, typically of wood, extending the user's effective range and striking power. Polearms are predominantly melee weapons, with a subclass of spear-like designs fit for thrusting and/or throwing. Because many polearms were adapted from agricultural implements or other fa
"Among our pole-arms we find curious forms developed which could have been used only for special purposes, like animals whose teeth were suited for a particular kind of food. Such pole-arms we find, too, did not long survive, disappearing just as specialized animals did when their special kind of food gave out."
"Come, stand by me; fear nothing. Guard with halberds!"
"Four Knaves in Garbs succinct, a trusty Band, Caps on their heads, and Halberds in their hand; And Particolour’d Troops, a shining Train, Draw forth to Combat on the Velvet Plain."
"Many a time, but for a sallet, my brainpan had been cleft with a brown bill;"
"Yea, distaff-women manage rusty bills Against thy seat: both young and old rebel, And all goes worse than I have power to tell."
"Staff-weapons in Medieval or Renaissance England were lumped together under the generic term "staves" but when dealing with them in detail we are faced with terminological difficulty. There never seems to have been a clear definition of what was what; there were apparently far fewer staff-weapons in use than there were names to call them by; and contemporary writers up to the seventeenth century use these names with abandon, calling different weapons by the same name and similar weapons by different names. To add to this, we have various nineteenth century terminologies used by scholars. We must remember too that any particular weapon ... had everywhere a different name."