Quarterstaff

Pronunciation

• US IPA: /ˈkwÉ”rtÉ™rËŒstæf/

Origin

quarter + staff, attested since about 1550. Probably originally referred to a staff cut from the hardwood of a certain size of tree which was cleft into four parts, per the OED.

Alternative forms

• quarter-staff
• quarter staff

Full definition of quarterstaff

Noun

1. A wooden staff of an approximate length between 2 and 2.5 meters, sometimes tipped with iron, used as a weapon in rural England during the Early Modern period.
• 1883, Howard Pyle, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood:First, several couples stood forth at quarterstaff, and so shrewd were they at the game, and so quickly did they give stroke and parry, that ...
2. Fighting or exercise with the quarterstaff.He was very adept at quarterstaff.

Usage notes

An attestation from 1590 of a quarter Ashe staffe shows that the "quarter" was an apposition and could still be detached (Richard Harvey, Plaine Perceuall the peace-maker of England , cited after the OED). Joseph Swetnam (1615) uses "quarterstaff" in the same sense in which George Silver (1599) had used "short staff", viz. for the staff between about 2 and 2.5 meters in length, as opposed to the "long staff" of a length exceeding 3 meters.

Contemporary use of the word disappears during the 18th century, and beginning with 19th-century Romanticism the word is mostly limited to antiquarian or historical usage.

Synonyms

• bo a Japanese quarterstaff
• short staff