lance

noun

• 1a long weapon for thrusting, having a wooden shaft and a pointed steel head, formerly used by a horseman in charging.
• a weapon resembling a lance used in hunting fish or whales.
• another term for lancer (sense 1).

• 2 [usually with modifier] a metal pipe supplying a jet of oxygen to a furnace or to a hot flame for cutting.

• 3a rigid tube at the end of a hose for pumping or spraying liquid.

verb

• prick or cut open with a lancet or other sharp instrument:abscesses should not be lanced until there is a soft spot in the center figurativethe governor made it one of his priorities to lance the boil of corruption
• pierce with or as if with a lance:the teenager had been lanced by a wooden splinter [no object]: figurativehis eyes lanced right through her
• [no object] move suddenly and quickly:pain lanced through her
• literary fling; launch:he affirms to have lanced darts at the sun