Earliest use in weapon (and later, agricultural) sense, bill(“a bladed pike (obsolete)”) + hook; other senses formed anew from various meanings of bill.
(weaponry) A medievalpolearm, fitted to a long handle, sometimes with an L-shaped tine or a spike protruding from the side or the end of the blade for tackling the opponent; a bill.
I worked very hard in the copse of young ash, with my billhook and a shearing-knife; cutting out the saplings where they stooled too close together, making spars to keep for thatching, wall-crooks to drive into the cob, stiles for close sheep hurdles, and handles for rakes, and hoes, and two-bills, of the larger and straighter stuff.
With a small billhook he carefully freed the collar of the tree from twigs and patches of moss which incrusted it to a height of a foot or two above the ground, an operation comparable to the "little toilet" of the executioner's victim.
(often written as bill-hook) A part of the knotting mechanism in a reaper-binder or baler (agricultural machinery).
Rare form of bill hook(“spiked hook used in shops for hanging papers”).
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billhook (third-person singular simple presentbillhooks, present participlebillhooking, simple past and past participlebillhooked)
To use a billhook.
2010, Arto Paasilinna, The Year of the Hare: A Novel:
Toward the end of July, Vatanen took a forestry job. It meant billhooking and chopping excessive undergrowth from the woods on the sandy ridges around Kuhmo and living in a tent with an ever more faithful, almost full- grown hare.
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