vise
Pluralvises
UK spellingvice
Pluralvises
- 1A clamping tool with two jaws, drawn together by a screw, lever, or cam, that holds a workpiece steady during filing or other work.
The machinist secured the part in a vise before drilling.
She clamped the wooden dowel in the vise and sawed it cleanly.
Similarclamp
Note
This is the American spelling of the bench tool. British English writes it vice, the form the word already had in Middle English. The name comes from the screw that closes the jaws: Old French vis, "screw", from Latin vītis, "vine", after its spiral tendril. The tool's working words are grip and jaws, and good practice keeps the vise's grip close to the hands doing the work.
- 2To clamp something tightly, with a vise or in the manner of a vise.
The mechanic will vise the bracket before grinding off the rough edge.
Fear vised his chest as the elevator lurched to a stop.
Note
The verb moves easily from the workbench to the body. Petersen's Photographic Magazine (1981) bends a vised pipe. Catherine Anderson's Phantom Waltz (2007) has a man vise a woman's knees under his arms. Its forms drop the final e, giving vising and vised. The past participle also serves as an adjective, as in the vised pipe.
- 3A predicament that squeezes a person's freedom of choice, leaving little room to maneuver.
Rising rents and stagnant wages caught tenants in a vise.
The diplomat found herself in a vise between two warring factions.
Similarbind, squeeze, trap, predicament
Note
The figure turns the workshop tool on people. Someone caught in a vise is pressed from two sides and cannot slip free. The usual frame is in a vise, with get, have or catch. Paul Selver's translation of Karel Čapek's R.U.R. uses it for a trap with no exit: "They've got us in a vise. We're done for."
Less common meanings
- 4A screw: a spiral-threaded fastener turned to join or secure pieces.
Note
Here the word means the very part the bench tool was named for. Middle English vis and vys meant the screw itself, and the clamp took its name from it. The sense is obsolete. A reader may meet it in old technical prose, but writing vise for a screw today would only confuse.
- 5A spiral staircase, ascending in a curving turn rather than a straight flight.
The monks descended the worn stone vise each morning for prayers.
A torch lit the cramped vise leading to the bell chamber.
Note
A stair that winds around a central post turns like a screw, and English once gave it the same name. The word for the thread was stretched to cover the whole climbing stair. This use is obsolete and belongs to older writing about buildings. Today the plain phrase is spiral staircase, and vise in this sense would puzzle most readers.
- 6Archaic alternative form of visé.
It was the hour in which all who had affairs to arrange with the Austrian ambassador, passports to vise, contracts to sign,were allowed entrance, and it was the baron's duty to receive them.
1867, Luise Mühlbach, Frederick the Great and His FamilyAt Manchouli, it was said, ViceConsul Ishida and Chancellor Teng requested the local Soviet Consulate to vise their passports, but the Soviet consulate authorities unreasonably declined to comply with the request.
1938, Manchuria: Semi-monthly Publication of the Manchuria Daily NewsNote
This vise has nothing to do with clamping. It is visé written without its accent, an archaic transitive verb meaning to examine and endorse a passport. Today we would say to visa it. Its usual object is the passport, which consuls are asked to vise and sometimes refuse to. Its forms vised and vising share their spelling with the clamping verb, so only context tells them apart.
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Origin
It comes from Middle English vis or vice ("screw"), from Anglo-Norman vyz and Old French vis ("screw"), which came from Latin vītis ("vine"). It is probably related to English withe.