coulter

• colter (US)
• culter (obsolete)

Inherited from Middle English culter, from Old English culter, from Latin culter (“a knife”). For the phonetic development, see poultry.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈkəʊltə/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

coulter (plural coulters)

1. (British) A knife or cutter attached to the beam of a plough to cut the sward, in front of the share and mouldboard.
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book VI, Canto IX”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     I lately left a furrow, one or twayne, / Unplough'd, the which my coulter hath not cleft […].

   • 1644, John Milton, Areopagitica:

     What is it but a servitude like that impos'd by the Philistims, not to be allow'd the sharpning of our own axes and coulters, but we must repair from all quarters to twenty licencing forges.

   • 1791, Erasmus Darwin, The Economy of Vegetation, J. Johnson, page 150:

     With colters bright the rushy sward bisect, / And in new veins the gushing rills direct […] .

2. (British) The part of a seed drill that makes the furrow for the seed.

• “coulter”, in Collins English Dictionary.

• cloture, clouter, clôture, lectour

coulter

1. Alternative form of culter