Lance

How to spell lance

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce lance

What does lance mean?

1. nounA long weapon with a pointed metal head, traditionally carried by a mounted soldier.
2. verbTo cut open or pierce something, especially a boil or abscess, with a sharp blade.

Lance in a sentence

• noun

  The knight lowered his lance and charged across the field.

• verb

  The doctor decided to lance the infected boil to drain it.

• noun

  The museum displays a medieval lance beside a suit of armour.

• verb

  A nurse can lance a painful abscess under local anaesthetic.

Where does lance come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word travelled into English from the Old French lance, which itself came from the Latin lancea, the name for a light throwing spear carried by foot soldiers. Roman writers seem to have borrowed lancea from a non-Latin source; many scholars suspect a Celtic or Iberian origin, since the weapon was associated with peoples on the western edge of the Roman world. English took the noun in the early 1300s, naming the long spear couched under the arm by a mounted knight, and the medieval lancer who wielded it. From the idea of a sharp point piercing flesh came the medical verb, used since the 1400s for opening a swelling or boil with a small blade. The personal name Lance, and the term freelance (originally a mercenary knight, a 'free lance'), both trace back to the same spear.

How the word is built

• lance (from Latin lancea: a light spear); no affixes