Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Plural form of
caltrop .
Etymologies
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Examples
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Police who conducted the pre-convention raids claim to have found 37 "caltrops" -- spikes that are scattered on a motorway to disable cars during a police pursuit.
Pro Libertate 2008
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He also, it is said, caused steel spikes, called caltrops, to be scattered up and down in the plain, where the English cavalry were most likely to advance, trusting in that manner to lame and destroy their horses.
Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 Charles Herbert Sylvester
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More than eighteen hundred of those planks bristling with nails, called caltrops, were distributed over the yonder side of the ditch.
A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 3 1830
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Other members of the gang placed a fake bomb at a police helicopter base, preventing the police from pursuing them from the air and also used chains and so-called caltrops to prevent vehicles from approaching the depot building.
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Other members of the gang placed a fake bomb at a police helicopter base, preventing the police from pursuing them from the air and also used chains and so-called caltrops to prevent vehicles from approaching the depot building.
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Other members of the gang placed a fake bomb at a police helicopter base, preventing the police from pursuing them from the air and also used chains and so-called caltrops to prevent vehicles from approaching the depot building.
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Deputies seized a variety of items that they believed were tools of civil disobedience: a gas mask, bolt cutters, axes, slingshots, homemade "caltrops" for disabling buses, even buckets of urine.
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After the arrests, the police showed "caltrops," which turned out to be roofing nails, and "buckets of urine," which turned out to be greywater used to flush toilets in eco-conscious homes.
Archive 2008-09-01 Walter Jon Williams 2008
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After the arrests, the police showed "caltrops," which turned out to be roofing nails, and "buckets of urine," which turned out to be greywater used to flush toilets in eco-conscious homes.
Chinese Commies and Others Walter Jon Williams 2008
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Deputies seized a variety of items that they believed were tools of civil disobedience: a gas mask, bolt cutters, axes, slingshots, homemade "caltrops" for disabling buses, even buckets of urine.
asativum commented on the word caltrops
I've always wanted to see a tropical annual procumbent poisonous subshrub. Or any kind of subshrub, for that matter.
April 17, 2008
reesetee commented on the word caltrops
Not to mention the five spiny nutlets. Or is it four-pronged edible nutlike fruits?
April 17, 2008
bilby commented on the word caltrops
I've seen a caltrop in a museum. It was a piece of barbed iron, constructed so that if it was tossed on the ground it would have at least one spike pointing upwards. They were used to impede cavalry. Iron age land mine, if you will.
April 17, 2008
asativum commented on the word caltrops
Poisonous iron-age landmines for nutlets. No wonder I haven't seen many subshrubs around lately.
April 18, 2008
frogapplause commented on the word caltrops
Police who conducted the pre-convention raids claim to have found 37 "caltrops" -- spikes that are scattered on a motorway to disable cars during a police pursuit.
—Pro Libertate
April 23, 2010