broad arrow

English

A stylised broad arrow (sense 1).

Heraldic broad arrow (sense 1) with plain barbs.

Etymology

From Middle English brodarwe, brode arewe, brood arowe.

Noun

broad arrow (plural broad arrows)

1. (A stylized representation of) a metal arrowhead, comprising a tang and two barbs meeting at a point; used traditionally in heraldry, and later by the British government to mark government property and convict uniforms.

   Synonyms: broad arrowhead, broadhead

   Hyponym: pheon

   • 1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 197:

     Their boats were manned by convicts, dressed in prison clothing, freely decorated with numbers and emblazoned all over with the ominous broad arrow.

2. (now chiefly historical) An arrow fitted with this arrowhead.
   • 1634, T[homas] H[erbert], “The Ambassadours entertainment by the King of Persia”, in A Relation of Some Yeares Trauaile, Begunne Anno 1626. into Afrique and the Greater Asia, […], London: […] William Stansby, and Jacob Bloome, →OCLC, page 98:

     It was his ill fate, to be a ſleepe, as old Abbas was going a hunting within the path, the King ſaw him not, but his pamperd horſe ſlartled at him, whereat immediatly the King ſent a broad Arrow into the poore mans heart, and ere all his followers had paſt, the man was kild a hundred times ouer, if ſo many Arrowes could haue forfeited ſo many liues, in imitating the King, as if the deed were good and commendable.

   • 1979, John M[athewson] Gilbert, “Hunting and Hawking”, in Hunting and Hunting Reserves in Medieval Scotland, Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers Ltd, →ISBN, section A (Introductory Narrative), page 62:

     Broad arrows, frequently mentioned in Scotland as a blanche ferme, were fired from the short bow and had a swallow tail or broad head with two large barbs sloping backwards towards the shaft.

   • 1987, Les A[llan] Murray, “Aspects of Language and War on the Gloucester Road”, in The Daylight Moon, Manchester: Carcanet Press Limited, published 1988, →ISBN, page 85:

     A hard yarn twangs the tension and fires its broad arrow out of a grim space of Old Australian smells: toejam, tomato sauce, semen and dead singlets the solitary have called peace but which is really an unsurrendered trench.

References

• “broad arrow, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.