spontoon

 [spon-toon]  

spon·toon

   [spon-toon]
noun
a shafted weapon having a pointed blade with crossbar at its base, used by infantry officers in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Also called half-pike.

Origin:
1590–1600; < French esponton < Italian spuntone, equivalent to s- ex-1 + puntone kind of weapon (literally, pointed object) (punt(o) point + -one augmentative suffix)
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Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Spontoon is always a great word to know.
So is ninnyhammer. Does it mean:
a fool or simpleton; ninny.
a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.
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Collins
World English Dictionary
spontoon (spɒnˈtuːn)
 
—n
a form of halberd carried by some junior infantry officers in the 18th and 19th centuries
 
[C18: from French esponton, from Italian spuntone, from puntopoint]

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
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