Quote Originally Posted by Utopian View Post
Growing up on a farm, I had the "privilege" of spending many hundreds of hours using a scythe, both the small one handed version and the two handed monsters depicted with the grim reaper. The scythe works so much better than a machete because of the angle at which the blade approaches and hits the grass. Though Bruce is correct that the actual motion of the real scythe is pivotal because of the way you're swinging it, I don't believe that is the approach for shaving.
Think of it exactly in the manner in which you slice a tomato or bread. You don't just push the blade straight down, instead as you push the blade down you are also moving the path of the blade in same manner as a single stroke of a saw. That way the edge of the blade is slicing through the object in two vectors at once. The beginning and ending positions of a straight cut could be depicted by a rectangle while the beginning and ending positions of a scythe cut would be depicted by a parallelogram.

Clear as mud?
+1. Scything is adding a unidirectional slicing motion to a chopping action.

The thing Jimmy describes, sounds like what AusTexShaver calls the scooping stroke: it variates the cutting angle during the stroke, and is very effective when used in short strokes ATG, in peculiar on very stubborn spots with swirling hair growth.
I was meaning to make an addition about it to the "advanced shaving techniques" Wiki article, but haven't got to it yet.