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baton
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
baton
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
ASP baton
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
charge
▪ Then there was the police baton charge.
▪ This onslaught was driven back by a police baton charge in the course of which four youths were slightly hurt.
▪ He told Heatley that he had been walking along the footpath when the police had made a baton charge.
▪ She was running down Duke Street, away from the baton charge, when she was arrested.
■ VERB
pass
▪ When I come home she passes the baton to me so she can rest.
take
▪ It was left to the capital's campuses to take up the baton.
▪ His supporters stress the sentimental and entertainment value of seeing him take the baton one more time.
▪ In the 4x200 meter relay, he took the baton trailing two other anchors by 12 meters.
use
▪ The police used their batons indiscriminately, bringing down anyone in their path.
▪ They struggled, but police used batons.
▪ For some choral music - the Missa Solemnis we were watching on film - you don't use a baton either.
▪ The security forces responded rapidly, using tear gas and batons.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ A baton twirler carried the flag.
▪ His supporters stress the sentimental and entertainment value of seeing him take the baton one more time.
▪ I saw one man being struck by a mounted officer's baton, picked up by some shocked onlookers and given first-aid.
▪ Illus.1 conveys this well, not least by the way the baton is shown as held some way towards the middle.
▪ In the last few days, you may have seen a horrifying video of police armed with Q-tips instead of batons.
▪ Karajan, it seems, always had a superb baton technique.
▪ Martin, arm raised and baton coming down again and again on Dobson's head.
▪ Not the tapping baton of Conductor Richard Armstrong-although his powers over an able orchestra become evident soon enough.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Baton

Baton \Bat"on\ (b[a^]t"[u^]n, F. b[aum]`t[^o]N"; 277), n. [F. b[^a]ton. See Baston.]

  1. A staff or truncheon, used for various purposes; as, the baton of a field marshal; the baton of a conductor in musical performances.

    He held the baton of command.
    --Prescott.

  2. (Her.) An ordinary with its ends cut off, borne sinister as a mark of bastardy, and containing one fourth in breadth of the bend sinister; -- called also bastard bar. See Bend sinister.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
baton

1540s, "a staff used as a weapon," from French bâton "stick, walking stick, staff, club, wand," from Old French baston (12c.) "stick, staff, rod," from Late Latin bastum "stout staff," probably of Gaulish origin or else from Greek *baston "support," from bastazein "to lift up, raise, carry." Meaning "staff carried as a symbol of office" is from 1580s; musical sense of "conductor's wand" is from 1841 (from 1839 as a French word in English). Often anglicized 17c.-18c. as batoon.

Wiktionary
baton

n. 1 A staff or truncheon, used for various purposes; as, the baton of a field marshal 2 (context music English) The stick of a conductor in musical performances. 3 (context sports English) An object transferred by runners in a relay race. 4 (lb en US) A short stout club used primarily by policemen; a truncheon (qualifier: UK). 5 (context heraldiccharge English) An abatement in coats of arms to denote illegitimacy. (Also spelled batune, baston). 6 (context heraldiccharge English) A riband with the ends cut off, resembling a baton, as shown on a coat of arms. vb. To strike with a baton.

WordNet
baton
  1. n. a thin tapered rod used by a conductor to direct an orchestra

  2. an implement passed from runner to runner in a relay race

Gazetteer
Wikipedia
Baton (military)

The ceremonial baton is a short, thick stick-like object, typically in wood or metal, that is traditionally the sign of a field marshal or a similar very high-ranking military officer, and carried as a piece of their uniform. The baton is distinguished from the swagger stick in being thicker and effectively without any practical function. Unlike a staff of office, a baton is not rested on the ground. Unlike a royal sceptre, a baton is typically flat-ended, not crowned on one end with an eagle or globe.

Baton (conducting)

A baton is a stick that is used by conductors primarily to enlarge and enhance the manual and bodily movements associated with directing an ensemble of musicians.

BATON

BATON is a Type 1 block cipher in use since at least 1995 by the United States government to secure classified information.

While the BATON algorithm itself is secret (as is the case with all algorithms in the NSA's Suite A), the public PKCS#11 standard includes some general information about how it is used. It has a 320-bit key and uses a 128-bit block in most modes, and also supports a 96-bit electronic codebook mode. 160 bits of the key are checksum material. It supports a "shuffle" mode of operation, like the NSA cipher JUNIPER. It may use up to 192 bits as an initialization vector, regardless of the block size.

In response to a Senate question about encrypted video links, NSA said that BATON could be used for encryption at speeds higher than those possible with Skipjack.

Baton (law enforcement)

A baton or truncheon (also called a cosh, billystick, billy club, nightstick, sap, blackjack, stick) is a club of less than arm's length made of wood, rubber, plastic or metal. They are carried for self-defense by law-enforcement officers, correctional staff, security-industry employees and military personnel. Other uses for truncheons and batons include crowd control or the dispersal of belligerent or non-compliant people.

A truncheon or baton may be used to strike, jab, block, bludgeon and aid in the application of armlocks. The usual striking or bludgeoning action is not produced by a simple and direct hit, as with an ordinary blunt object, but rather by bringing the arm down sharply while allowing the truncheon to pivot nearly freely forward and downward, so moving its tip much faster than its handle – effectively a slingshot action, only without releasing. Sometimes, they also are employed as weapons by criminals and other law-breakers because of their easy concealment, being reserved for criminal use in many jurisdictions around the world. They have a common role to play, too, in the rescuing of trapped individuals—for instance, people caught in blazing cars or buildings—by smashing windows or even doors.

Usage examples of "baton".

To the right and left of the autobahn a drive cut into the pine forests, and two soldiers in winter clothing, each with a battery-powered illuminated baton, stood at the entrance to each, waiting to summon something hidden in the forests across the road.

One step would lead to another until Marino discovered Jay Talley and Bev Kiffin in Baton Rouge and eliminated them.

I likewise admired the start given to the orchestra by the baton of the leader, but he disgusted me with the movements of his sceptre right and left, as if he thought that he could give life to all the instruments by the mere motion of his arm.

Mesopotamia High marching along throwing her tan kneecaps first at one curb and then at the other and masturbating the longest baton in the band between those far-flung thighs, producing Mis in the senile Legionnaires lining the route, but I had been bombed on Gomer City and my sexual stride had been broken.

He had come to believe, partly from practice, partly from theory, that twenty blows with a baton on the rump are not dishonoring.

Gerron, becoming a corporal, had obtained no idea of any kind of sorrow other than that coming from the blows of a baton on the rump .

Tomorrow would be soon enough to face the devil and the dilemma of what to do about returning Merissa Thomas to Baton Rouge.

I took a mungy sweat sock and his track team relay baton and one of his knives, which he had told me not to touch, but which I did touch, for his own good and mine too.

Normally he would have thought of them simply as guests of the hotel, but those two had stalked the Residence Inn in Baton Rouge the night before, and had also come out into the open in the morning, when the two rookies attempted to kidnap Pamela Sasser.

It was almost as if the sound sprang up at the rising of his hand, just as the music of a great orchestra seems to leap under the baton of the conductor.

Spike is beating Spurling and his redneck posse like willful dogs, his baton cracking shins, shoulders, elbows, and skulls with surgical precision.

Behind him stood Ferguson, Styler and Addison, black batons at their sides.

An invisible batrachian maestro lowered his baton and more voices chimed in, gulps and grunts, rattling snares, pops and clicks, tunking notes as of hollow canes.

The crazy man spun the stick like a baton twirler, but with both hands.

At Hamburg we had already received intelligence of the fatal result of the battle of the Sierra Morena, and of the capitulation of Dupont, which disgraced him at the very moment when the whole army marked him out as the man most likely next to receive the baton of Marshal of France.