quarterstaffとは 意味・読み方・使い方

別の表記

• quarter-staff
• quarter staff
• quarter-stave
• quarterstave

語源

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

発音

• (米国発音) IPA: /ˈkwɔɹtəɹˌstæf/

名詞

quarterstaff (plural quarterstaffs or quarterstaves)

1. A wooden staff with 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.
   • 1600, William Kempe, Kemps nine daies vvonder:

     Name my accuſer ſaith he, or I defye thee Kemp at the quart ſtaffe.

   • 1881, Walter Besant, James Rice, “How Kitty First Saw the Doctor”, in The Chaplain of the Fleet […], volume I, London: Chatto and Windus, […], →OCLC, part I (Within the Rules), page 82:

     [F]ew country people there are who do not love to see two sturdy fellows thwack and belabour each other with quarter-staff, single-stick, or fists.

2. Fighting or exercise with a wooden staff of this sort.

   He was very adept at quarterstaff.

   • 1883, Howard Pyle, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood […], New York, N.Y.: […] Charles Scribner’s Sons […], →OCLC:

     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 […]

使用する際の注意点

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.

同意語

• bo (a Japanese quarterstaff)
• lathi (an India quarterstaff)
• short staff