pruning hook
Americannoun
noun
Etymology
Origin of pruning hook
First recorded in 1605–15
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The woman holds a laurel wreath, plow stock and pruning hook, and a biblical inscription at her feet says: “They have beat their swords into plough-shares and their spears into pruning hooks.”
From Seattle Times • Dec. 19, 2023
Last week the President: > Used a pruning hook on departmental Budget estimates, slashing away steadily.
From Time Magazine Archive
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Their eyes are upon their plough; their attention is fixed upon the harvest; their sight follows the pruning hook.
From The Wanderer (Volume 4 of 5) or, Female Difficulties by Burney, Fanny
Then will the sword and the spear be molten into the plowshare and the pruning hook, and the desert shall bud and blossom as the rose.
From The Optimist's Good Morning by Perin, Florence Hobart
No hirelings they, who fought for mere glory, or lust of gold, but husbands, fathers of families--men who had left the ploughshare and pruning hook to fight for hearth and altar.
From The Rival Heirs; being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune by Crake, A. D. (Augustine David)
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.