A mattock is a digging tool: a long wooden handle with a heavy metal head fixed across the top, so it looks a bit like a pickaxe. You swing it down and it bites into the ground. The difference from a pickaxe is the head. A pickaxe has two points, for breaking rock. A mattock has at least one flat, wide blade set sideways — like a hoe blade but much heavier — for cutting through hard soil, chopping roots, and levering stones out. Most mattocks have two working ends: a blade on one side and either a point or a second blade at a right angle on the other. It is a farm-and-field tool, not a garden-shop tool: you see it where the ground is hard, in orchards, on building sites, and in archaeology. It is not a common word in daily conversation — many native speakers know the tool by sight but reach for 'pickaxe' when they name it. You are most likely to meet it in books, especially older or rural writing.

鶴嘴鋤、十字鎬（一端是寬扁的刃）。台灣農具裡最接近的是「鋤頭」，但鋤頭輕、用來鬆土；mattock 重得多，是拿來劈硬土、砍樹根、撬石頭的。