scythe

The vicious blade dives into the pool like a scythe and surges toward me, an exhaust trail of bubbles erupting from the hilt.

Nothing could have provided a more suitable host than an area of prairie where native grasses had been scythed away and the ground torn up by metal ploughshares and the hooves of a farmer’s horses.

But it was his scything down of a then-17-year-old Allen in the 1-0 defeat to West Ham the following year which etched his name in the history of the game.

He also cut the hay at the end of summer, initially trying with a scythe - Poldark-style - but ultimately finding a small tractor does the trick in a less backbreaking way.

The Vatican foreign minister described the Pope's ability to scythe through difficult subjects with clarity, reminding officials, for example, to remember migrants as human beings and not just "numbers" in their discussions about them.