celt (tool)
{{Short description|Prehistoric tool}}
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Image:Olmec celts from Met.jpg celts. The one in the foreground is incised with an image of an Olmec figure.]]Image:Celt tool Transyslvania.jpg
In archaeology, a celt {{IPAc-en|ˈ|s|ɛ|l|t}} is a long, thin, prehistoric, stone or bronze tool similar to an adze, hoe, or axe.
A shoe-last celt was a polished stone tool used during the early European Neolithic for felling trees and woodworking.
Etymology
The term "celt" seems to have come about from a copyist's error in many medieval manuscript copies of Job 19:24 in the Latin Vulgate Bible, which became enshrined in the authoritative Sixto-Clementine printed edition of 1592. Where all earlier versions (the Codex Amiatinus, for example) have vel certe (the Latin for 'but surely'), the Sixto-Clementine has vel celte. The Hebrew has לעד (lā‘aḏ) at this point, which means 'forever'. The editors of the Oxford English Dictionary "[incline] to the belief that celtis was a phantom word", simply a misspelling of certe. However, some scholars over the years have treated celtis as a real Latin word.
From the context of Job 19:24 ("Oh, that my words were inscribed with an iron tool on lead, or engraved in rock forever!"), the Latin word celte was assumed to be some kind of ancient chisel. Eighteenth-century antiquarians, such as {{Interlanguage link multi|Lorenz Beger|de|Lorenz Beger|fr|Lorenz Beger}}, adopted the word for the stone and bronze tools they were finding at prehistoric sites; the OED suggests that a "fancied etymological connexion" with the prehistoric Celts assisted its passage into common use.
See also
- {{annotated link|Hapax legomenon}}
- {{annotated link|Palstave}}
- {{annotated link|Rattleback}}
References
Oxford English Dictionary entry for "CELT (2)," quoted in {{cite web |url=https://listserv.heanet.ie/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9507&L=CELTIC-L&P=2539 |title=Re: the word Celt. |author=Martin Burns |website=CELTIC-L, The Celtic Culture List |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110717081415/https://listserv.heanet.ie/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9507&L=CELTIC-L&P=2539 |archive-date=2011-07-17}}
External links
- {{Cite EB1911 |wstitle=Celt (tool)}}
{{Prehistoric technology| state=expanded}}