siðe. In Middle English and later, it was usually spelled sithe or sythe. However, in the 15th century some writers began to use the sc- spelling as they thought (wrongly) that the word was related to the Latin (meaning "to cut"). Nevertheless, the sithe spelling lingered, and notably appears in Noah Webster's dictionaries.

A scythe consists of a shaft about 170 cm long called a snaith, snath, snathe or sned, traditionally made of wood but now sometimes of