Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Forfex

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rich, Anthony (1849). The illustrated companion to the Latin dictionary, and Greek lexicon. p. vi. OCLC 894670115. https://archive.org/details/illustratedcompa00rich. 

FORFEX (ψαλίς, μάχαιρα διπλῆ, Pollux. ii. 32.) A pair of scissors, clippers, or shears, employed for snipping (Columell. xii. 44. 4.), clipping the hair or beard (Mart. vii. 95.), shearing sheep (Calpurn. Ecl. v. 74.), and other similar purposes. The example (Forceps/5.1) represents a pair of sheep shears, as seen over the figure of a ram in an engraved gem; and the wood-cut at p. 208 shows an instrument of exactly the same form, used as a pair of scissors by a party of garland makers. The form of the instrument, moreover, which is round at the bottom, as Galen describes the Greek ψαλίς, not only identifies that word with the Latin forfex, but also accounts for the secondary meanings which it bore; viz. a vault, an absis, and an arched aqueduct.

2. A pair of shears for raising weights. Vitruv. x. 2. 2.

3. In military language, a tenaille, or body of troops disposed in the form of the letter V, to receive the attack of another advancing in the shape of a wedge (cuneus), which it admitted within its position, and then closed upon its flanks. Veg. Mil. iii. 18. Gell. x. 9.

• 
  Forceps/5.1