claymore
(kleɪmɔə(r))
Also 8 glaymore, cly-more.
[ad. Gael. claidheamh (ˈklai{schwatilde}v) mòr ‘great sword’. Being two words in Gaelic, it has two accents: sometimes one, sometimes the other, has the main stress in Eng.]
1. a. Hist. The two-edged broadsword of the ancient Scottish Highlanders. Also (inexactly, but very commonly) the basket-hilted broadsword introduced in 16th c., which was frequently single-edged.
(The claymore was not, except in extraordinary instances, two-handed.)
| 1772 Pennant Tours Scotl. (1774) 289 See here a Cly-more, or great two-handed sword. 1773 Boswell Jrnl. Hebrides 15 Sept., The broad-sword now used..called the glaymore (i.e. the great sword). 1775 Johnson Western Isl. Wks. X. 457 Their arms were anciently the Glaymore, etc. c 1787 Burns Battle Sheriff-Muir vi, By red claymores, and muskets' knell. 1802 Campbell Lochiel's Warning, When Albin her claymore indignantly draws. 1813 Scott Trierm. Introd. vii, Its heroes draw no broad claymore. a 1839 Praed Poems (1864) II. 14 His nodding plume and broad claymore. |
b. ellipt. A man armed with a claymore.
| 1848 Macaulay Hist. Eng. I. 553 He might then hope to have four or five thousand claymores at his command. |
2. A type of anti-personnel mine. In full claymore mine.
| 1962 Ordnance Techn. Terminol. (U.S.) (PB 181–465) 72/2 Claymore, name given to a type of antipersonnel mine designed to produce a directionalized, fan shaped pattern of fragments. 1965 M. Browne New Face of War iv. 35 American arms designers have produced a mine called a ‘Claymore’, which has found wide use here [in Vietnam]. The Claymore, curved like a horseshoe, has an optical sighting device and hurls a blast of shrapnel directionally at the point toward which it has been pre-aimed. 1966 New Statesman 9 Sept. 341/1 One Claymore mine would finish this mob. 1966 New Scientist 17 Nov. 369/1 The claymore, whose effects can be devastating among close-packed ranks of men, was invented to deal with the wave formations of Chinese during the Korean war. |