All 3 Uses of

scythe
in
To the Lighthouse

She watched her son George scything the grass.†
Part 2 *

scything = cutting grass with a tool that has a curved blade and a long handle that is held with both hands

And now as if the cleaning and the scrubbing and the scything and the mowing had drowned it there rose that half-heard melody, that intermittent music which the ear half catches but lets fall; a bark, a bleat; irregular, intermittent, yet somehow related; the hum of an insect, the tremor of cut grass, disevered yet somehow belonging; the jar of a dorbeetle, the squeak of a wheel, loud, low, but mysteriously related; which the ear strains to bring together and is always on the verge of harmonising, but they are never quite heard, never fully harmonised, and at last, in the evening, one after another the sounds die out, and the harmony falters, and silence falls.†
Part 2

Definitions:

(1) (scythe)
a tool for cutting grass that has a curved blade and a long handle that is held with both hands
(2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)
meaning too rare to warrant focus:

Much more rarely, scythe can be used as a verb to reference the cutting of weeds or tall grasses (such as hay or wheat) with a scythe. Metaphorically, the verb form can be used to describe cutting through anything as in "scythed through the problems in less than a week."