sheathe
Formssheathes, sheathing, sheathed
- 1To slide something, such as a knife or sword, into its sheath.
The knight wiped the blade clean and sheathed it at his side.
Hunters learn to sheathe a knife the moment they finish using it.
Oppositeunsheathe
Note
The verb and the noun once shared a spelling: Shakespeare's Julius Caesar has Sheath your dagger. Today the verb ends in -e, as breathe sits beside breath and bathe beside bath, and that final letter is the quickest way to tell them apart on the page. Its opposite is unsheathe, and the verb goes back to Late Middle English shethen.
- 2To enclose something within a protective outer covering.
Engineers sheathe the steel beams in concrete to protect them from fire.
She sheathed her legs in thick wool tights before heading out into the snow.
Oppositeunsheathe
Note
The construction is sheathe something in something, and the covering is usually close-fitting: steel beams sheathed in concrete, legs sheathed in the sheerest nylons. Said of clothing, it keeps a hint of the blade in its scabbard, sleek and snug. Saul Bellow's Humboldt's Gift turns it inward, with a man who can never find enough enchantment to sheathe himself in.
- 3Of an animal, to draw a body part back into the body, as a cat draws its claws into its paws.
Cats sheathe their claws when relaxed and extend them to climb or fight.
The lioness sheathed her claws once the cubs stopped squabbling.
Similarretract
Oppositeunsheathe
Note
Cats are the familiar case, but the word covers any part an animal can draw back into a covering of its own: Noël-Antoine Pluche uses it of hummingbirds drawing back their long tongues. John Dryden's The Hind and the Panther (1687) gives it a moral edge, with a generous lion who sheathes his paws once his foe lies beaten on the plain.
- 4To thrust a sharp object, such as a sword, claw or tusk, into something.
The ballad ends with the knight vowing to sheathe his blade in his rival's breast.
And nuzzling in his flank, the loving swine / Sheathed unaware the tusk in his soft groin.
1593, [William Shakespeare], Venus and AdonisNote
Here the body becomes the sheath: a sword is sheathed in a breast, a tusk in a flank. Shakespeare used the grim reversal more than once; in Venus and Adonis the loving boar, nuzzling, sheathes its tusk unaware in Adonis's soft groin. Keep it to poetry or deliberate archaism, because a modern reader expects the word to mean that the weapon was put away.
- 5To provide a sword or similar blade with a sheath.
Note
This meaning comes from the craft side of the word: to sheathe a blade was to have a scabbard made for it. In Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, one excuse for the unready servants is that Walter's dagger was not come from sheathing, still at the maker's when it was wanted. Modern English says the blade is being fitted with a sheath.
- 6To give up or put an end to a hostile feeling, such as anger or animosity.
The mayor urged both camps to sheathe their animosity until the flood was over.
After years of feuding, the brothers sheathed their hostility for their mother's sake.
Note
The image is a quarrel's weapon put away, applied to the feeling itself: Shakespeare pairs sheathe your impatience with throw cold water on your choler. The use is rare and obsolete, and a modern writer would more naturally speak of putting aside anger or burying a grudge; in present-day prose it reads as a deliberate period touch.
- 7In older medicine, to relieve the harsh or painful effect of a drug, poison or similar substance.
The apothecary added a slippery syrup to sheathe the burning effect of the purge.
He concludes this Diſſertation, by endeavouring to explain the Manner of its [olive oil's] operating, which he attributes to its fat inviſcating Nature, whereby it ſheathes the Spicula of the Poiſon.
1738, C. Mortimer, “VI. An Abstract by C. Mortimer, M.D. Secr[etary of the] R[oyal] S[ociety] of an Inaugural Dissertation Published at…Note
Behind it lies an old theory of illness, in which harsh drugs, poisons and bodily humors carried sharp points that wounded the body from inside. Oily or slimy remedies were thought to cover those points the way a scabbard covers a blade: olive oil sheathing the spicula of a poison, or comfrey's clammy juice sheathing the sharpness of the humors in Thomas Short's Medicina Britannica.
Practice
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Origin
From late Middle English shethen ("to put a sword or knife into a sheath"), probably from an Old English *scēaþian, or possibly formed from Middle English sheth, shethe ("scabbard, sheath") + the verb ending -en. Sheth(e) comes from Old English sċēaþ ("sheath"), from Proto-Germanic *skaiþiz ("sheath; covering"), from Proto-Indo-European *skey- ("to dissect, split"), possibly from the idea of a split stick with a sword inside.