turn swords into ploughshares

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

a biblical phrase from the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 2:4) describing the transformation of instruments of warfare into instruments of agriculture as a vision of universal peace — a world in which nations will no longer study war and the energy devoted to destruction will be redirected toward cultivation and sustenance; the phrase has become the defining idiom for the conversion of military capacity and resources to peaceful purposes, applied to arms reduction treaties, military base conversions, defence industry diversification, and the demobilisation and economic reintegration of combatants after war; the UN sculpture in New York depicting a man beating a sword into a ploughshare makes the image a centrepiece of international peace architecture; the American Ploughshares movement adapted the phrase for nuclear disarmament activism