A Welsh hook is a type of polearm, a halberd-like weapon with a hook on the back, and gained its name due to its prevalence among the Welsh soldiers during the medieval wars against the English.^[1] It appears to have been derived from an agricultural implement known as a forest-bill (or a long hedging-bill) with the addition of a hook on the back and a spike on the front.^[2]

In literature

• "That no man presume to wear any weapons, especially Welsh-hooks and forest-bills", ("The History of Sir John Oldcastle", Folio 3, 1664, 60).^[3]
• Falstaff "My own knee? ... and swore the devil his true liegeman upon the cross of a Welsh hook,—What, a plague, call you him?", (Shakespeare Henry IV Part 1, 290).^[3]