Cosh vs Quarterstaff - What's the difference?

As nouns the difference between cosh and quarterstaff

is that cosh is a weapon made of leather-covered metal similar to a blackjack while quarterstaff is a wooden staff of an approximate length between 2 and 2.5 meters, sometimes tipped with iron, used as a weapon in rural England during the Early Modern period.

As a verb cosh

is to strike with a weapon of this kind.

As a symbol cosh

is the symbol of the hyperbolic function hyperbolic cosine.

cosh

Translingual

Symbol

(head)

The symbol of the hyperbolic function hyperbolic cosine.

quarterstaff

English

(wikipedia quarterstaff)

Alternative forms

*quarter-staff *quarter staff

Noun

(en-noun)

A wooden staff of an approximate length between 2 and 2.5 meters, sometimes tipped with iron, used as a weapon in rural England during the Early Modern period.

* 1883 , Howard Pyle, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood :

First, several couples stood forth at quarterstaff , and so shrewd were they at the game, and so quickly did they give stroke and parry, that

Fighting or exercise with the quarterstaff.

He was very adept at quarterstaff .

Usage notes

An attestation from 1590 of a quarter Ashe staffe'' shows that the "quarter" was an apposition and could still be detached (Richard Harvey, ''Plaine Perceuall the peace-maker of England , cited after the OED). Joseph Swetnam (1615) uses "quarterstaff" in the same sense in which George Silver (1599) had used "short staff", viz. for the staff between about 2 and 2.5 meters in length, as opposed to the "long staff" of a length exceeding 3 meters. Contemporary use of the word disappears during the 18th century, and beginning with 19th-century Romanticism the word is mostly limited to antiquarian or historical usage.

Synonyms

* (l) (a Japanese quarterstaff) *short staff