punji stick


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pun·ji stick

 (po͝on′jē, pŭn′-)
n.
A very sharp bamboo stake that is concealed at an angle in high grass, in a hole, or in deep mud, often coated with excrement, and planted to wound and infect the feet of enemy soldiers. Also called punji stake.

[Origin unknown.]
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
References in periodicals archive ?
Not to mention mutated sea bass, fembots, and more sexy birds than you can shake a punji stick at.
Frisella points to a card on punji pits as an example of the cards' wholesomeness": "Rather than take the route that many other companies might take, which would've been to show someone screaming in pain with a punji stick through his foot, we just took a boot and put a stick through it."
It is every day for Thuong, who as it turns out, has once stepped on a punji stick on a day like this on a mission like this back when he was much younger.
The camp had 40 makeshift huts and around 100 pieces of punji sticks (sharpened stakes).
It contained quite a bit of water, and some of the remaining stumps were sizable, but others were thin, sharp at the top and about a foot to 18 inches tall, like a series of punji sticks in an Asian tiger trap.
Officers encountered punji sticks, which Merrifield described as 6- to 8-inch lengths of branches sharpened to a point, shoved in the ground and covered with dirt and leaves.