[3] They can be used to chop into the ground with the adze and pull the soil towards the user, opening a slit to plant into.

[3] The use of a mattock can be tiring because of the effort needed to drive the blade into the ground, and the amount of bending and stooping involved.

[1] Cutter mattocks (Swahili: jembe-shoka) are used in rural Africa for removing stumps from fields, including unwanted banana suckers.

[6] Mattocks (Greek: μάκελλα) are the most commonly depicted tool in Byzantine manuscripts of Hesiod's Works and Days.

[8] Mattocks made of whalebone were used for tasks including flensing – stripping blubber from the carcass of a whale – by the broch people of Scotland and by the Inuit.

It may be cognate to or derived from the unattested Vulgar Latin matteūca, meaning club or cudgel.