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In archaeology, a celt Template:IPAc-en is a long, thin, prehistoric, stone or bronze tool similar to an adze, hoe, or axe.
A shoe-last celt was a polished stone tool used during the early European Neolithic for felling trees and woodworking.
EtymologyEdit
The term "celt" seems to have come about from a copyist's error in many medieval manuscript copies of Job 19:24 in the Latin Vulgate Bible, which became enshrined in the authoritative Sixto-Clementine printed edition of 1592. Where all earlier versions<ref name="Gibson1899"/> (the Codex Amiatinus, for example) have vel certe (the Latin for 'but surely'), the Sixto-Clementine has vel celte. The Hebrew has לעד (lā‘aḏ) at this point, which means 'forever'. The editors of the Oxford English Dictionary "[incline] to the belief that celtis was a phantom word",<ref name="Laistner1925"/> simply a misspelling of certe. However, some scholars over the years have treated celtis as a real Latin word.<ref name="Laistner1925"/><ref name="Burns1995"/>
From the context of Job 19:24 ("Oh, that my words were inscribed with an iron tool on lead, or engraved in rock forever!"), the Latin word celte was assumed to be some kind of ancient chisel. Eighteenth-century antiquarians, such as Template:Interlanguage link multi, adopted the word for the stone and bronze tools they were finding at prehistoric sites; the OED suggests that a "fancied etymological connexion"<ref name="Burns1995"/> with the prehistoric Celts assisted its passage into common use.
See alsoEdit
ReferencesEdit
<references> <ref name="Burns1995">Oxford English Dictionary entry for "CELT (2)," quoted in {{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
<ref name="Gibson1899">Template:Cite book</ref>
<ref name="Laistner1925">Template:Cite journal</ref> </references>