sword

beat (or turn) swords into ploughshares devote resources to peaceful rather than aggressive or warlike ends.

☞ The reference here is to the biblical image of God's peaceful rule: 'they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks' (Isaiah 2:4).

cross swords: seecross.

a double-edged sword: seedouble-edged.

fall on your sword assume responsibility or blame on behalf of other people, especially by resigning from a position.

☞ The allusion is to a method of suicide in ancient Rome.

2013New Statesman The time has come for you to fall on your sword. After 20 unbroken years at the heart of politics, you need a rest.

he who lives by the sword dies by the sword those people who commit violent acts must expect to suffer violence themselves. proverb

☞ The phrase was originally used with allusion to an incident in the Garden of Gethsemane. When the men came to arrest Jesus, one of his disciples drew his sword and cut off the ear of 'the servant of the high priest', earning this rebuke from Jesus: 'all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword' (Matthew 26:52). In contemporary versions sword is sometimes replaced by gun, bomb, etc.

the pen is mightier than the sword: seepen.

put someone to the sword kill someone, especially in war.

sword and sorcery a genre of fiction characterized by heroic adventures and elements of fantasy.

sword of Damocles an imminent danger.

☞ When the courtier Damocles described Dionysius I, ruler of Syracuse (405–367bc), as the happiest of men, Dionysius gave him a graphic demonstration of the fragility of his happiness: he invited Damocles to a banquet, in the middle of which he looked up to see a naked sword suspended over his head by a single hair.