sheaf

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English shef, also sheef and sheve,^[2][3][4] inherited from Old English scēaf (“sheaf, bundle”),^[5][6][7][8] plural sceafas,^[4][2] from Proto-Germanic *skauba- (“sheaf”).^[1][9][8][3] Its cognates include Old Saxon skōf, Dutch schoof, Old High German scoub (“sheaf, bundle”), German Schaub (“wisp of straw”) and Old Norse skauf (“fox's tail”).^{[5][8][10][11]} The OED calls it common Germanic but wanting in Gothic.^[5] Two explanations of the root are current: the OED, the Shorter Oxford, Hoad, the Oxford Dictionary of English and Skeat connect it with shove;^{[5][10][8][12][13]} Etymonline, Holthausen and Klein set it beside words for a tuft, such as Gothic 𐍃𐌺𐌿𐍆𐍄 (skuft, “hair of the head”) and German Schopf (“tuft”),^[4][14][11] with Etymonline tracing them to Proto-Indo-European *(s)keup- (“cluster, tuft, hair of the head”).^[4] Barnhart and Köbler give the Indo-European form as uncertain among similar shapes.^[3][9] Partridge tentatively suggests a root meaning "to cut".^[15]

Earliest recorded meaning

One of the large bundles into which cereal stalks are bound after reaping: the OED's first record is the Old English Corpus Glossary,^[5] and the Random House text dates the word to before 900.^[16] Ælfric's Genesis has it about 1000, in the dream of binding sheaves in the field.^[3][7]

Semantic evolution

From bound grain the word spread to other things tied or clustered together.^[5][4] It was used for counted bundles: of iron or steel from 1309–10, of arrows from 1318, of glass plates in the 15th century.^[5][3] The arrows are often specifically two dozen, as in Chaucer.^[17][4][18] A sheaf could also be a share of the crop due to a lord or the church, the tenth sheaf of a tithe, until about 1800.^[5][2] The general sense of any bundle or cluster of things came early in Etymonline's view, by about 1300,^[4] but only about 1728 in the OED and Barnhart;^[5][3] from it come the modern sense of a bundle of objects^[19] and, in the 19th century, sheaves of rays and lines in physics and mathematics.^[5] The word's forms vary by region: the English Dialect Dictionary records shaff and shaf in Cumberland, Westmorland and Yorkshire, with compounds such as sheaf-hole, the opening through which sheaves were pitched into a barn.^[20]

Timeline

• before 900 – Old English scēaf, a bundle of reaped grain.^[16][5]
• c. 1200 – Middle English form, in the Ormulum.^[3][2]
• 1309 – a bundle of iron or steel (obsolete by 1597).^[5][3]
• 1318 – a bundle or quiverful of 24 arrows.^[5][3]
• 1387 – a share of the crop paid to a lord or the church (obsolete by 1800).^[5]
• 1402 – a number of glass plates (obsolete by 1532).^[5]
• c. 1420 – a representation of a sheaf, as in heraldry.^[5]
• 1506 – verb, to bind into sheaves.^[5][10]
• 1600 – figurative uses.^[5]
• before 1728 – a cluster or bundle of things.^[5][3]
• 1811 – a cluster of jets of fire or water.^[5]
• 1845 – a cluster of flowers or leaves.^[5]
• 1863 – a bundle of rays or lines through a point.^[5]
• 1865 – in the plural, a large quantity.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. A bundle of cut grain stalks tied together after reaping.^[19][10][18]
2. A bundle of other plant stalks or of flowers.^[18][10]
3. A collection of things bound or held together; a bundle.^[19][18][5]
4. The arrows held in a quiver, or an archer's allowance of them, such as 24.^[19][18][5]
5. (physics, mathematics) A set of rays or lines all passing through one point.^[5]
6. (obsolete, 1387–1800) A set share of the crop paid to a lord or the church.^[5][2]
7. (obsolete, 1309–1597) A bundle of iron or steel of a fixed number of rods.^[5][3]

Verb

1. To tie or make into a sheaf or sheaves.^[19][5][10]

Word family

• sheaflike

Related words

• shove
• sheave
• wheatsheaf

Usage notes

The usual plural is sheaves, with sheafs as a less common form.^[18] The sources treat as a minor separate word a sheaf meaning sheath, an alteration of that word recorded from 1697.^[5][18]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
7. ^ a b Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
8. ^ a b c d Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Germanisches Wörterbuch, 5th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
10. ^ a b c d e f Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
12. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
13. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
14. ^ Holthausen, Ferdinand (1934), Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
15. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
16. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
17. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
18. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
19. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
20. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)