Chisel

Part of speech: verb, noun

Pronunciation: /ˈt͡ʃɪzəl/

Definitions

1. A tool with a sharp blade used to cut, shape, or remove hard materials like wood or stone ; to obtain something dishonestly or by trickery, often through cheating ; to carve or shape by cutting with a sharp instrument
2. An instrument with a bevelled edge employed for carving or cutting hard substances ; to defraud or cheat someone through cunning methods ; the act of shaping material by carefully cutting with a sharp edged tool
3. A hand tool designed for striking or cutting into hard surfaces such as wood or metal ; to illegally or unfairly obtain money or advantages from others ; to form or fashion an object by cutting with a chisel

Etymology: The tool's name has two unrelated ancestors, and the one that won out may have started as a word for pebbles. Old English had "ċeosol" or "ċisil," meaning gravel or sand, descended from a Proto-West Germanic "*kesul," a small stone. Those words faded from the language, and the modern tool name instead came in through Old and Anglo-Norman "chisel" from Latin "cīsōrium," a cutting tool, itself built from "caedere," to cut. So the English word for a shaping tool and the old word for gravel are separate lines that happen to have converged on the same spelling. The Latin source has a surprising cousin. "Chisel" is a doublet of "scissors," meaning the two words descend from the same Latin root but reached English by different routes and took on different shapes. Both carry the idea of cutting, which is the sense the Latin "caedere" gave them.

Synonyms: carve, cut, shape, sculpt, engrave

Antonyms: smooth, fill, blend, mold, flatten