Illustration of crossbow
: a weapon for shooting quarrels and stones that consists chiefly of a short bow mounted crosswise near the end of a stock
Examples of crossbow in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
Eventually, Bobby Beeman harvested the massive whitetail with a crossbow.
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Josh Honeycutt, Outdoor Life, 27 Mar. 2024
Davies said the training arrow had a metal head and solid body wrapped in a plastic sheath, which likely came from a crossbow.
—Mona Darwish, Orange County Register, 25 Feb. 2024
By the time Betty White shot Joel McHale with a crossbow, there were still 23 episodes to go.
—Ew Staff, EW.com, 8 Jan. 2024
The town was in decline as a center of the wool trade but alive with the mayhem of some fifteen hundred young men—loosely supervised, theoretically celibate, armed with crossbows—the scholars of the university.
—Sam Knight, The New Yorker, 12 Mar. 2024
Officers were called to an address in Bywater Place in southeast London at around 4.55 a.m. local time (11.55 p.m. Monday ET) after occupants reported that a man armed with weapons including a crossbow was attempting to force his way in, said the city’s Metropolitan Police.
—Jack Guy, CNN, 30 Jan. 2024
There is typically a trade-off between a projectile's mass and its launch speed, with, for example, heavier arrows fired by a crossbow moving more slowly than lighter arrows.
—Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 28 Aug. 2023
All but one had been starved. Inside the shed, police investigators found a machete, a homemade electrical prod, crossbow arrows, aluminum bats, and several other weapons.
—Teri Figueroa, San Diego Union-Tribune, 1 Mar. 2024
Similar to cellular trail cameras and crossbows, the technology has been met with resistance by a certain faction who contends that drones offer hunters an unfair advantage and could lead to a number of unethical scenarios.
—Hayden Sammak, Outdoor Life, 8 Feb. 2024
Josh Honeycutt, Outdoor Life, 27 Mar. 2024
Davies said the training arrow had a metal head and solid body wrapped in a plastic sheath, which likely came from a crossbow.
—Mona Darwish, Orange County Register, 25 Feb. 2024
By the time Betty White shot Joel McHale with a crossbow, there were still 23 episodes to go.
—Ew Staff, EW.com, 8 Jan. 2024
The town was in decline as a center of the wool trade but alive with the mayhem of some fifteen hundred young men—loosely supervised, theoretically celibate, armed with crossbows—the scholars of the university.
—Sam Knight, The New Yorker, 12 Mar. 2024
Officers were called to an address in Bywater Place in southeast London at around 4.55 a.m. local time (11.55 p.m. Monday ET) after occupants reported that a man armed with weapons including a crossbow was attempting to force his way in, said the city’s Metropolitan Police.
—Jack Guy, CNN, 30 Jan. 2024
There is typically a trade-off between a projectile's mass and its launch speed, with, for example, heavier arrows fired by a crossbow moving more slowly than lighter arrows.
—Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 28 Aug. 2023
All but one had been starved. Inside the shed, police investigators found a machete, a homemade electrical prod, crossbow arrows, aluminum bats, and several other weapons.
—Teri Figueroa, San Diego Union-Tribune, 1 Mar. 2024
Similar to cellular trail cameras and crossbows, the technology has been met with resistance by a certain faction who contends that drones offer hunters an unfair advantage and could lead to a number of unethical scenarios.
—Hayden Sammak, Outdoor Life, 8 Feb. 2024
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'crossbow.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Dictionary Entries Near crossbow
Cite this Entry
“Crossbow.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/crossbow. Accessed 19 Apr. 2024.
Copy CitationKids Definition
crossbow
noun
cross·bow
-ˌbō 
: a short bow mounted crosswise near the end of a wooden stock that shoots short arrows
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