Dictionary:
sword (sôrd)  |
at swords' points
[Middle English, from Old English sweord.]
| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: sword |
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| How Products are Made: How is a sword made? |
Background
The development of the sword was not possible until ancient civilizations discovered how to mine and work metal. Thus, the first swords were probably made of the oldest worked metal, pure copper. The earliest copper mines were in Egypt around 3700B.C., and in Anatolia (in what is now Turkey) around the same time. By about 1900B.C., copper working had spread across Europe, and presumably copper swords were made during this era. Copper alloyed with tin produces bronze, and this metal made stronger weapons than pure copper. The earliest bronze swords were made by the Egyptians in about 2500B.C. They made blades by heating bronze ingots or by casting molten metal in clay molds. Bronze swords were used throughout the ancient world, until bronze was replaced by iron as the metal used to make weapons. The Hittites knew how to smelt iron as early as 3000B.C., but an efficient method of forming the iron into blades was not discovered until somewhere around 1400 B.C. The Hittites were the first to harden iron for blades by heating it with carbon, hammering it into shape, and then quenching it in water. They kept their methods secret for as long as they could, but gradually ironworking spread across the ancient world. The Romans used iron swords with double blades, a weapon for hand-to-hand fighting. A bigger sword, which could be used to fight from horseback, came into vogue in Western Europe by the third century. Both the Vikings and Saxons were renowned swordsmiths. They used sophisticated ironworking techniques both in forming and decorating their blades.
During the Middle Ages in Europe, the sword was the preferred weapon of the knight in armor. The medieval sword was made of steel, and so sharp and heavy that it could easily cut a man in half. The quality of the sword depended to a great extent on the quality of the metal. Production of swords was specialized in certain towns or areas where skilled ironworkers had access to good metal and knew how to work it. From the sixth century, the lower Rhine in Germany was a center of sword manufacturing, and later swords were exported from Milan, Brescia, and Passau. Toledo, in Spain, was renowned for its swords. A test of the Toledo sword's sharpness was to throw a silk scarf into the air so that it floated down onto the sword blade. The edge was so sharp that the silk would rend on impact.
Perhaps the strongest swords ever made were the weapons of the samurai in Japan. As far back as the eighth century until the end of the feudal period in the nineteenth century, Japanese smiths made blades of exceptional hardness by welding strips of iron and steel together, then folding the resulting sandwich over on itself and pounding it flat again. This process was repeated from 12-28 times. Old blades were passed down in families, and some were still in use in World War H. These swords were so sharp and strong they could cut through a machine gun barrel.
During the sixteenth century, the sword evolved from a slashing weapon into a more refined thrusting rapier. The rapier had a long, thin blade sometimes reaching 6 ft (1.83 m) in length. When carried at the waist, the longest of rapiers would inconveniently hit the street. By the end of the century, the rapier became more lightweight and its length was shortened to 3 ft (0.91 m). These adjustments gave birth to swordplay and expertise.
With swordplay arose the art of the duel, a privilege primarily reserved for the upper class. From 1600-1789, 40,000 aristocrats lost their lives in duels. Since Germans preferred heavier swords, dueling was often violent and resulted in injury and death. It was tolerated by the ruling monarchs because of its rigid exclusion of the lower classes. In Germany, dueling as an aristocratic sport unified the upper classes and distinguished them from the masses. In France, dueling was more of an art that did not necessarily have to end in injury or death. With the French Revolution and the abolition of aristocracy, dueling was considered a sport for all. The French used lighter weight epees—a sword with no cutting edge that tapers to a point—and duels were usually fought until the first blood was drawn. By the end of the nineteenth century, Frenchmen averaged 400-500 duels per year with a nonexistent death rate. The English banned dueling in 1844.
Swords declined in utility after the introduction of firearms, though they persisted for a surprisingly long time. The British army was still perfecting its sword design in the first decade of the twentieth century, and its last change in design was in 1920. The cutlass, a wide sword used in the British Navy, was not withdrawn from service until 1936. Swords made today are for the most part ceremonial. They are still part of some military dress uniforms. The only place where swords are actually still employed as weapons seems to be Japan, where they are said to be a choice murder weapon of underworld gangsters and far-right political assassins.
Fencing as Sport
With the refinement of sword design and the popularity of dueling came the sport of fencing. During the eighteenth century Domenico Angelo, an Italian that studied swordsmanship in Paris, moved to London and gained a reputation as an expert duelist. Challenged by Ireland's master swordsman Dr. Keys, Angelo quickly out-maneuvered Dr. Keys' slashing techniques with his own fencing moves. His victory made Angelo popular with the upper class as a teacher of dueling. He opened a school and fencing as sport was established.
Modern fencing is done with blunted foils, epees, and sabers. A typical uniform is equipped with a padded jacket, gauntlets, and wire-mesh helmets. It is an official Olympic sport and it's popularity has been sustained by the romantic swashbuckling of early Hollywood films and recent epics like Star Wars and Braveheart.
Raw Materials
The swords commonly in use in Europe in the Middle Ages were made of steel. Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon, and iron heated properly over a charcoal fire becomes steel. But the theory behind the process was not understood until the nineteenth century, and not many communities knew how to make good steel. Iron smelters roasted ore in charcoal fires, and produced wrought iron, cast iron and carbon steel, depending on the heat and makeup of the ore. Cast iron contains more than 2.2% carbon. It is too hard to work, and until the fourteenth century in Europe, it was considered a waste product. Wrought iron contains less than 0.3% carbon. It is a soft, workable metal most used for tools. But wrought iron swords bent in use, and so were inferior to steel ones. Steel suitable for swords contains from 0.3-2.2% carbon, and it is both soft and workable and can be hardened by heating it to red hot and then quenching it in water.
Until the fourteenth century, when the mechanical bellows was invented and iron production became more organized in Europe, production of steel was haphazard, and primitive furnaces produced steel more by luck than design. The invention of the bellows and the blast furnace in the fourteenth century allowed smelters to heat ore to higher temperatures, producing wrought iron that could be converted to steel. A common kind of steel available in Medieval Europe was called blister steel. It was made from thin rods of wrought iron. The iron rods were packed in charcoal dust and set inside a tight iron box or small furnace. The iron was heated in the furnace and blown with the bellows. When the iron reached white hot, it began to absorb carbon from the charcoal, and turn to steel. Rods of small diameter could be transformed into steel in about 24 hours, and bigger rods took longer.
The finest steel was imported from India, called Wootz steel. Indian metallurgy was renowned from the time of the Roman Empire, and blades made in the Persian Empire and across the east were usually made from imported Wootz. European Crusaders encountered Wootz steel in the superior weapons of their eastern enemies. Crusading knights began bringing Wootz steel back to Europe in the eleventh century, but the secret of making it remained in India until the nineteenth century. Blades made from Wootz showed a grainy pattern in the metal, formed by the fibrous layout of crystals in the steel. The appearance has been compared to watered silk, or damask fabric. The swordsmith usually emphasized the pattern by etching the blade with acid. The most skilled smiths could make the crystalline pattern appear in regular formations along the blade. This ancient art is now lost. Eastern blades with patterned metal are called Damascus swords, named after the city that was a major east-west trading point. To confuse matters, some European swords are also called "Damascus." In this case, European smiths tried to copy the eastern swords by marking blades and inlaying the metal. But in true Damascus blades, the patterning is inherent in the steel itself, and not imposed on it.
Indian metallurgists had several ways of preparing Wootz steel. In one method, wrought iron plates were immersed in a crucible filled with molten cast iron. Cast iron has a high carbon content, and when heated, the carbon leached from the cast iron to the wrought plates. The resulting metal was a mixture of soft iron and hard carbon steel, dispersed in granules throughout the ingot. Another method was to crush iron ore and wash it repeatedly, in the panning process used by goldminers. This refined ore was then dried and placed in a small clay crucible. The smelter added charcoal and other plant matter, sealed the crucible, and fired it in a charcoal fire for one to two days. Then, the sealed crucible was cooled for another period of days. The clay was broken open, and the ingot was then packed in clay mixed with iron filings. Next, the smelter reheated this mixture to red heat. At this point, the metal was soft enough to work, and could be successfully forged into weapons.
The Manufacturing
Process
Different metal workers made swords in many different ways, and most of the techniques of swordmaking were never written down. In general, specialized smiths made swords. The finishing of the blade, which often involved elaborate inlay work, was done separately by a jeweler. Then the blade was sometimes sent to a cutler, who did the final assembling of the blade in the grip. What follows is a general process for a type of sword made with an iron core and steel blades. A Roman sword was presumably made this way, as were the swords of Toledo.
Forming the core
Drawing out
Fitting the blades
Packing the edge
Tempering
Filing and grinding
Decorating
Assembling
Byproducts/Waste
The production of iron and steel for swords required massive amounts of charcoal. Charcoal is made from slowly charred wood. The amount of trees needed to provide charcoal was so enormous that Queen Elizabeth I of England had to put a limit on how much timber could be felled, fearing her country would run out. An ironworks in colonial America that produced 15 tons of iron a week used up about four square miles of forest each year. So iron production on a massive scale ran into the danger of deforestation.
Iron itself was usually assiduously recycled. Old nails and horseshoes made excellent sword cores, and smiths usually kept a scrap heap of broken or useless tools and parts that could be melted down and re-used. An unskilled smith, however, could waste steel if he burnt the narrow edge of a blade. If heated too high, the steel became brittle and useless. And in this condition, it was not recyclable.
Where to Learn More
Books
Bealer, Alex W. The Art of Blacksmithing. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1969.
Evangelista, Nick. Encyclopedia of the Sword. Greenwood Publishing Group, 1995.
Figiel, Leo S. On Damascus Steel. New York: Atlantis Arts Press, 1991.
Oakeshott, Ewart. A Knight and His Weapons. Chester Springs, PA: Dufour Editions, 1997.
Wilkinson-Latham, Robert. Swords in Color. New York: Arco Publishing Company, 1978.
Periodicals
"Murder a la Mode." The Economist (April 29, 1995).
[Article by: Angela Woodward]
| Idioms: sword |
Idioms beginning with sword:
sword of Damocles
In addition to the idiom beginning with sword, also see at sword's point; cross swords.
| US Military Dictionary: sword |
n. a weapon with a long metal blade and a hilt with a handguard, used for thrusting or striking and now typically worn as part of ceremonial dress.
put to the sword kill, especially in war.
swordlike adj.
See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.
| Archaeology Dictionary: sword |
A bronze, iron, or steel weapon of war and prestige comprising a long thin blade for slashing, thrusting, or both. Swords are distinguished from daggers by their greater length and from rapiers by their wider and more substantial blades. Single-edged swords are relatively rare and better classified as sabres or falchions. Swords usually have substantial hilts cast with the blade and then elaborated with organic materials to provide extra grip. The earliest swords in Europe are of Bronze Age date and seem to have appeared in central Europe in the early 2nd millennium bc. They spread to Greece and the Aegean before 1650 bc and thereafter to the rest of Europe and western Asia. In China the earliest swords date to the 10th century bc.
| Columbia Encyclopedia: sword |
| Word Tutor: sword |
It's not the maker of the sword, but the courage and skill of the swordsman that wins the day.
— Robert M. Irwin.
| Dream Symbol: Sword |
Swords can represent a severing of obstacles, as well as matters requiring aggressive and forceful action. The dreamer may need to use a sword, or may be wielding it with authority and commitment.
| Wikipedia: Sword |
A sword is a long, edged piece of metal, used in many civilizations throughout the world, primarily as a cutting or thrusting weapon and occasionally for clubbing. The word sword comes from the Old English sweord, cognate to Old High German swert, Middle Dutch swaert, Old Norse sverð (cf.Danish sværd, Norwegian sverd, Swedish svärd) Old Frisian and Old Saxon swerd and Modern Dutch zwaard and German Schwert, from a Proto-Indo-European root *swer- "to wound, to cut"[1].
A sword fundamentally consists of a blade and a hilt, typically with one or two edges for striking and cutting, and a point for thrusting. The basic intent and physics of swordsmanship have remained fairly constant through the centuries, but the actual techniques vary among cultures and periods as a result of the differences in blade design and purpose. Unlike the bow or spear, the sword is a purely military weapon, and this has made it symbolic of warfare or naked state power in many cultures. The names given to many swords in mythology, literature, and history reflect the high prestige of the weapon (see types of swords).
Contents |
Humans have manufactured and used metal bladed weapons from the Bronze Age onwards. The sword developed from the dagger when the construction of longer blades became possible, from the late 3rd millennium BC in the middle-east, first in arsenic copper, then in tin-bronze. The oldest sword-like weapons are found at Arslantepe, Turkey, and date to around 3300 BC. It's however believed that these are longer daggers, and not the first ancestors of swords. Swords longer than 60 cm were rare and not practical during the Bronze Age as at longer lengths the tensile strength of bronze starts to decrease radically, which means such long swords would bend easily. It was not until the development of stronger alloys such as steel , and improved heat treatment processess that longswords became practical for combat.
The hilt, either from organic materials or bronze (the latter often highly decorated with spiral patterns, for example), at first simply allowed a firm grip and prevented the hand from slipping onto the blade when executing a thrust or the sword slipping out of the hand in a cut. Some of the early swords typically had small and slender blades intended for thrusting. Later swords were broader and were both cutting and thrusting weapons. A typical variant for European swords is the leaf-shaped blade, which was most common in North-West Europe at the end of the Bronze Age, in the UK and Ireland in particular. The Naue Type II Swords which spread from Southern Europe into the Mediterranean, have been linked by Robert Drews with the Late Bronze Age collapse.[2]
Sword production in China is attested from the Bronze Age Shang Dynasty. The technology for bronze swords reached its high point during the Warring States period and Qin Dynasty. Amongst the Warring States period swords, some unique technologies were used, such as casting high tin edges over softer, lower tin cores, or the application of diamond shaped patterns on the blade (see sword of Goujian). Also unique for Chinese bronzes is the consistent use of high tin bronze (17-21% tin) which is very hard and breaks if stressed too far, whereas other cultures preferred lower tin bronze (usually 10%), which bends if stressed too far. Although iron swords were made alongside bronze, it wasn't until the early Han period that iron completely replaced bronze.
The earliest available Bronze age swords of copper discovered from the Harappan sites date back to 2300 BC. Swords have been recovered in archaeological findings throughout the Ganges-Jamuna Doab region of India, consisting of bronze but more commonly copper.[3] Diverse specimens have been discovered in Fatehgarh, where there are several varieties of hilt.[3] These swords have been variously dated to periods between 1700-1400 BCE, but were probably used more extensively during the opening centuries of the 1st millennium BC.[3]
Not every sword company that used bronze also developed swords. For example, the steppe tribes preferred short daggers (the akinakes). In South America, bronze was used by the Incas, and although the concept of the sword was known in the form of wooden swords with stone edges (the macahuitl), they did not develop bronze swords.
Iron swords became increasingly common from the 13th century BC.[citation needed] The Hittites, the Mycenaean Greeks,[citation needed] and the Proto-Celtic Hallstatt culture (8th century BC) figured among the early users of iron swords. Iron has the advantage of mass-production due to the wider availability of the raw material. Early iron swords were not comparable to later steel blades. The iron was not quench-hardened although often containing sufficient carbon, but work-hardened like bronze by hammering. This made them comparable or only slightly better in terms of strength and hardness to bronze swords. They could still bend during use rather than spring back into shape. But the easier production, and the better availability of the raw material for the first time permitted the equipment of entire armies with metal weapons, though Bronze Age Egyptian armies were at times fully equipped with bronze weapons.
By the time of Classical Antiquity and the Parthian and Sassanid Empires in Iran, iron swords were common. The Greek xiphos and the Roman gladius are typical examples of the type, measuring some 60 to 70 cm. The late Roman Empire introduced the longer spatha (the term for its wielder, spatharius, became a court rank in Constantinople), and from this time, the term longsword is applied to swords comparatively long for their respective periods.
Chinese steel swords made their appearance from the 3rd century BC Qin Dynasty. The Chinese Dao (刀 pinyin dāo) is single-edged, sometimes translated as sabre or broadsword, and the Jian (劍 pinyin jiàn) double-edged.
The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea mentions swords of Indian iron and steel being exported from India to Greece.[4] Sri Lankan and Indian Blades made of Damascus steel also found their way into Persia.[4]
The spatha type remained popular throughout the Migration period and well into the Middle Ages. Vendel Age spathas were decorated with Germanic artwork (not unlike the Germanic bracteates fashioned after Roman coins). The Viking Age saw again a more standardized production, but the basic design remained indebted to the spatha.
Around the 10th century, the use of properly quenched hardened and tempered steel started to become much more common than in previous periods. The Frankish Ulfberht blades (the name of the maker inlaid in the blade) were of particularly consistent high quality. Charles the Bald tried to prohibit the export of these swords, as they were used by Vikings in raids against the Franks.
Wootz steel which is also known as Damascus steel was a unique and highly prized steel developed on the Indian subcontinent as early as the 5th century BCE. Its properties were unique due to the special smelting and reworking of the steel creating networks of iron carbides described as a globular cementite in a matrix of pearlite. In Sri Lanka a unique wind furnace was used to produce the steel, the unique design produced better quality steel. This gave the blade a very hard cutting edge and beautiful patterns. For obvious reasons it became a very popular trading material. The use of Damascus steel in swords became extremely popular in the 16th and 17th centuries.[5][6]
It was only from the 11th century that Norman swords began to develop the quillons or crossguard. During the Crusades of the 12th to 13th century, this cruciform type of arming sword remained essentially stable, with variations mainly concerning the shape of the pommel. These swords were designed as cutting weapons, although effective points were becoming common to counter improvements in armour.
As steel technology improved, single-edged weapons became popular throughout Asia. Derived from the Chinese Jian or dao, the Korean hwandudaedo are known from the early medieval Three Kingdoms. Production of the Japanese tachi, a precursor to the katana, is recorded from ca. 900 CE (see Japanese sword).
The swords manufactured in Indian workshops find mention in the writing of Muhammad al-Idrisi.[7]
From around 1300 to 1500, in concert with improved armour, innovative sword designs evolved more and more rapidly. The main transition was the lengthening of the grip, allowing two-handed use, and a longer blade. By 1400, this type of sword, at the time called langes Schwert (longsword) or spadone, was common, and a number of 15th and 16th century Fechtbücher offering instructions on their use survive. Another variant was the specialized armour-piercing swords of the estoc type. The longsword became popular due to its extreme reach and cutting and thrusting abilities. The estoc became popular because of its ability to thrust into the gaps between plates of armor. The grip was sometimes wrapped in wire or coarse animal hide to provide a better grip and to make it harder to knock a sword out of the user's hand.
A number of manuscripts covering longsword combat and techniques dating from the 13th-16th centuries exist in German, Italian, and English, providing extensive information on longsword combatives as used throughout this period. Many of these are now readily available online.
In the 16th century, the large Doppelhänder (called the Zweihänder today; both German names refer to the use of both hands) concluded the trend of ever-increasing sword sizes (mostly due to the beginning of the decline of plate armor and the advent of firearms), and the early Modern Age saw the return to lighter, one-handed weapons.
The Japanese katana reached the height of its development at about this time. In the 15th and 16th centuries, samurai increasingly found a need for a sword to use in closer quarters, leading to the creation of the modern katana. The katana is also associated with the Japanese samurai.
The sword in this time period was the most personal weapon, the most prestigious, and the most versatile for close combat, but it came to decline in military use as technology changed warfare. However, it maintained a key role in civilian self-defense.
Some, including warfare professor Michael Sheehan of Midleton University, Ireland, think the rapier evolved from the Spanish espada ropera in the 16th century. The rapier differed from most earlier swords in that it was not a military weapon but a primarily civilian sword. Both the rapier and the Italian schiavona developed the crossguard into a basket-shaped guard for hand protection. During the 17th and 18th centuries, the shorter smallsword became an essential fashion accessory in European countries and the New World, and most wealthy men and military officers carried one. Both the smallsword and the rapier remained popular dueling swords well into the 18th century.
As the wearing of swords fell out of fashion, canes took their place in a gentleman's wardrobe. Some examples of canes—those known as sword canes or swordsticks—incorporate a concealed blade. The French martial art la canne developed to fight with canes and swordsticks and has now evolved into a sport. The English martial art singlestick is very similar.
Towards the end of its useful life, the sword served more as a weapon of self-defense than for use on the battlefield, and the military importance of swords steadily decreased during the Modern Age. Even as a personal sidearm, the sword began to lose its preeminence in the early 19th century, paralleling the development of reliable handguns.
Swords continued in use, but were increasingly limited to military commissioned officers' and non-commissioned officers' ceremonial uniforms, although most armies retained heavy cavalry until well after World War I. For example, the British Army formally adopted a completely new design of cavalry sword in 1908, almost the last change in British Army weapons before the outbreak of the war. The last units of British heavy cavalry switched to using armoured vehicles as late as 1938. Swords and other dedicated melee weapons were used occasionally by various countries during World War II, but typically as a secondary weapon as they were outclassed by contemporaneous firearms.
The production of replicas of historical swords originates with 19th century historicism. Contemporary replicas can range from cheap factory produced look-alikes to exact recreations of individual artifacts, including an approximation of the historical production methods. Most high quality swords (replicas) may be found in lands that first adapted to the idea of this weapon, or which later improved it.
The sword consists of the blade and the hilt. The term scabbard applies to the cover for the sword blade when not in use.
Three types of attacks can be performed with the blade: striking, cutting, and thrusting. The blade can be double-edged or single-edged, the latter often having a secondary "false edge" near the tip.
The blade may have grooves known as fullers for lightening the blade while allowing it to retain its strength and stiffness, similar to the effect produced by a steel I-beam used in construction. The blade may taper more or less sharply towards a point, used for thrusting. The part of the blade between the Center of Percussion (CoP) and the point is called the foible (weak) of the blade, and that between the Center of Balance (CoB) and the hilt is the forte (strong). The section in between the CoP and the CoB is the middle. The ricasso or shoulder identifies a short section of blade immediately forward of the guard that is left completely unsharpened, and can be gripped with a finger to increase tip control. Many swords have no ricasso. On some large weapons, such as the German Zweihänder, a metal cover surrounded the ricasso, and a swordsman might grip it in one hand to wield the weapon more easily in close-quarter combat. The ricasso normally bears the maker's mark. On Japanese blades this mark appears on the tang (part of the blade that extends into the hilt) under the grip.
At the base of the blade, a flap of leather could be attached to a sword's crossguard, the Chappe which serves to protect the mouth of the scabbard and prevent water from entering. It is also called a Rain Guard.
From the 18th century onwards, swords intended for slashing, i.e., with blades ground to a sharpened edge, have been curved with the radius of curvature equal to the distance from the swordman's body at which it was to be used. This allowed the blade to have a sawing effect rather than simply delivering a heavy cut. European swords, intended for use at arm's length, had a radius of curvature of around a meter. Middle Eastern swords, intended for use with the arm bent, had a smaller radius.
The hilt is the collective term of the parts allowing the handling and control of the blade, consisting of the grip, the pommel, and a simple or elaborate guard, which in post-Viking Age swords could consist of only a crossguard (called cruciform hilt or quillons). The pommel, in addition to improving the sword's balance and grip, can also be used as a blunt instrument at close range. It may also have a tassel or sword knot.
The tang consists of the extension of the blade structure through the hilt.
Common accessories to the sword include the scabbard, as well as the sword belt.
Swords can fall into categories of varying scope. The main distinguishing characteristics include blade shape (cross-section, taper, and length), shape and size of hilt and pommel, age, and place of origin.
For any other type than listed below, and even for uses other than as a weapon, see the article Sword-like object.
As noted above, the terms longsword, broad sword, great sword, and Gaelic claymore are used relative to the era under consideration, and each term designates a particular type of sword.
One strict definition of a sword restricts it to a straight, double-edged bladed weapon designed for both slashing and thrusting.[citation needed] However, general usage of the term remains inconsistent and it has important cultural overtones, so that commentators almost universally recognize the single-edged swords such as Asian weapons (dāo 刀, katana 刀) as "swords", simply because they have a prestige akin to their European counterparts.
In most of Asian countries, sword (jian 劍, ken, pedang) is double-edged straight bladed weapon, while knife or saber (dāo 刀, do, pisau, golok) refers to a single-edged one. Thus, a katana should not be translated to samurai sword. In Sikh history the sword is held in very high esteem. A Single-edged sword is called Kirpan, and double-edged is called a Khanda or Tega.
Europeans also frequently refer to their own single-edged weapons as swords —generically backswords, including sabres. Other terms include falchion, scimitar, cutlass, dussack, Messer or mortuary sword. Many of these refer to essentially identical weapons, and the different names may relate to their use in different countries at different times. A machete as a tool resembles such a single-edged sword and serves to cut through thick vegetation, and indeed many of the terms listed above describe weapons that originated as farmers' tools used on the battlefield.
The Scabbard can also be called a sheath.
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Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (April 2008) |
Apart from the aforementioned types of symbolic swords, the following individually named swords are noteworthy:
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| Translations: Sword |
Dansk (Danish)
n. - sværd, sabel
idioms:
idioms:
idioms:
Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - ξίφος, σπαθί, στρατιωτική ισχύς, πόλεμος
idioms:
idioms:
Português (Portuguese)
n. - espada (f)
idioms:
Русский (Russian)
меч, шпага, рапира, шашка, сабля, сила оружия, военная сила, правосудие, возмездие
idioms:
idioms:
Svenska (Swedish)
n. - svärd, sabel, värja
中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
刀剑, 武力, 战争
idioms:
中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 刀劍, 武力, 戰爭
idioms:
idioms:
idioms:
العربيه (Arabic)
(الاسم) سيف
עברית (Hebrew)
n. - חרב, מלחמה, כח צבאי
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