A sickle is a farming tool with a short handle and a curved blade, shaped like a crescent moon. Farmers have used sickles for thousands of years to cut grain crops like wheat and rice. You hold the wooden handle in one hand and swing the blade in a smooth arc through the stalks, gathering and cutting them close to the ground.

Before machines took over most farming work, families would spend days in the fields at harvest time, each person working with their own sickle. The curved blade makes the cutting motion natural and efficient: you can slice through many stalks with one sweep. Even today, farmers in some parts of the world still use sickles for small fields or in places where tractors can't go.

The sickle appears in stories, flags, and symbols throughout history. You might recognize it from the hammer and sickle symbol of the Soviet Union, where it represented agricultural workers. In Greek mythology, the god Cronus carried a sickle. The Grim Reaper, a personification of death in European folklore, carries a larger version called a scythe.

The blade's distinctive curve also makes sickle useful for describing other curved shapes, like the crescent shape of red blood cells in sickle cell disease.