colter

• coulter (mostly Commonwealth)
• culter

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 (UK)

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• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈkoʊltəɹ/

colter (plural colters)

1. A knife or cutter attached to the beam of a plow to cut the sward, in advance of the plowshare and moldboard.
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book VI, Canto IX”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, OCLC 960102938:

     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, p. 150:

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

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

• Chambers's Etymological Dictionary, 1896, p. 82

• Cotler, ECRLOT, lector

colter

1. Alternative form of culter