SINGLESTICK • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Singlestick

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noun

Singlestick n.

In England and Scotland, a cudgel used in fencing or fighting; a backsword.

The game played with singlesticks, in which he who first brings blood from his adversary's head is pronounced victor; backsword; cudgeling.

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Etymology of 'Singlestick'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Singlestick" Quotes from Famous Books

... became faster friends than ever. We had constant sparring matches and some practice also with singlestick and foils; and Mr. Johnson would let me off sometimes of an afternoon to go a-fishing with the boy. Before I had been a month at the Hall there were few likely streams for miles around that I did not know. All this time I had seen very little of the other members of ...

— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... be! Yes! It is my friend, my gallant faithful veteran, Captain Hedzoff! Ho! Hedzoff! Knowest thou not thy Prince, thy Giglio? Good Corporal, methinks we once were friends. Ha, Sergeant, an' my memory serves me right, we have had many a bout at singlestick.' ...

— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Sometimes, when I hear him laughing and jesting with the men, or with some of his school friends whom he brings up here, it seems to me that I see myself again in him; and that he is a merry young fellow, full of life and fun, and able to hold his own at singlestick, or to foot it round the maypole with any lad in Kent of his age. Then again, when he is talking with his mother, or giving directions in her name to the French labourers, I see a different lad, altogether: grave and quiet, with a gentle, ...

— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty

... young kinsman, and at once accepted his services and that of his companion. Harry Drury was not unused to arms. He had been taught fencing as a part of his education, and would use the singlestick, arquebus, and crossbow, while the fashion of every gentleman wearing a sword had rendered it necessary that this weapon should be handled skilfully. The necessary drill was therefore soon learned by Harry, and he was admitted to serve in the same ...

— Hayslope Grange - A Tale of the Civil War • Emma Leslie

... not so this time. The master was a fencer, and something of a boxer; he had played at singlestick, and was used to watching an adversary's eye and coming down on him without any of those premonitory symptoms by which unpractised persons show long beforehand what ...

— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)