Sword

   

A sword (from Old English sweord; akin to Old High German swerd) is a bladed weapon, consisting in its most fundamental design of a blade and a handle. The blade is normally of metal and often ground to at least one sharp edge and usually has a pointed tip for thrusting. The handle, called the hilt, can be made of many materials, but the material most common is wood covered by leather, fish skin or metal wiring. The basic intent and physics of swordsmanship is fairly constant, but the methods of using those physics vary widely from culture to culture. Most of the variations can be understood in terms of the differences in blade designs around the world.

History

This kind of weapon has been in use from the Bronze Age when the construction of long metal blades was possible for the first time. Early swords were made of solid bronze or copper. Not until iron could be forged did the sword truly become an effective weapon. Eventually smiths learned that with a proper amount of charcoal (specifically the carbon in it) in the iron, an improved alloy called steel could be produced.

Several different methods of swordmaking existed in ancient times. One of the most famous is pattern welding. Over time different methods were developed all over the world.

In Pre-Columbian South America and Mesoamerica several cultures made use of types of swords without developing metallurgy; for example swords with obsidian "teeth" mounted along the "edges" of a wooden "blade".

During the 17th Century and 18th Century, a smallsword was an essential fashion accessory in European countries, and carried by most wealthy men. As the wearing of swords fell out of fashion, their place in a gentleman's wardrobe was taken by canes. Some examples of canes incorporate a concealed blade and are known as swordsticks.

Having seen use for about five millennia, swords began to lose their pre-eiminance in the late 18th century because of increasing availability and reliability of firearms. With the invention of repeating firearms following the Napoleonic wars in the early 19th Century they became obsolete as military weapons.

Swords were still used, although increasingly limited to officers and 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 were converted to armoured vehicles as late as 1938.

Cavalry charges still occurred as late as World War II during which Japanese and Pacific Islanders also occasionally used swords but by then they were usually completely outmatched by an enemy armed with machine guns, barbed wire and armoured vehicles.

Types of swords

There are several hundred types of swords. Here is a list of some of the most famous:

  • Claymore - either of two types of Scottish sword, a two-handed design that is older and was used as an anti-cavalry weapon, and a more modern blade, famous as the "basket-hilted" claymore. This weapon lent its name to the modern Claymore anti-personnel mine.
  • Dao (刀 pinyin dāo) - a Chinese single-edged curved sword, sometimes translated as sabre or broadsword in English.
  • Estoc - 16th Century armor and chain-mail-piercing sword
  • Gladius - a Roman legionaire's short sword
  • Jian (劍 pinyin jiàn) - a Chinese double-edged thin straight sword
  • Katana (刀; かたな) and Tachi (太刀; たち) - Japanese samurai swords - see also Wakizashi
  • Long-sword - a straight, pointed, two edged European sword with a grip long enough for use with two hands
  • Broadsword - the traditional European, two-edged, straight, and two-handed sword commonly seen in movies about the Middle Ages.
  • Rapier - a longer european dueling sword, optimized more for thrusting than a slashing action
  • Sabre - (saber) a sword with curved edge intended for slashing or chopping
  • Scimitar - non-historical term for a wide, strongly curved short sword with a clip point, supposedly from the Middle East. In reality, this is a term not only for the shamshir, a long, slim, strongly curved blade that became widely-known during the Islamic and Osmanic conquests along with the Yatagan, another Turkish style of sword, but also for the turkish kilij and the Indian tulwar. Made of famous "damascus" steel - another misnomer for wootz or crucible steel.
  • Small-sword - a very short and light descendant of the rapier.
  • Zwëihander - a very large and heavy, two-handed German sword.

Several modern sports and martial arts have components based upon older principles of swordfighting. Among these are fencing, kendo, kenjutsu, escrima, aikido and some variants of kung fu.

Many swords in mythology, literature and history are named by their wielders or by the person who makes them.


A tool resembling the sword is called a machete (or, in Southern Africa, a panga) and is used to cut through thick vegetation. Indeed, the difference between a machete and a sword is mainly that of width and utilization, and several types of swords in history resemble the machete in construction, such as for example the scramasax, the dusack, and the falchion.

While a rigid classification is not feasible, the latter is usually referred to as a kind of chopping sword. The scramasax, usually lacking a cross-piece or any kind of guard, is more properly considered a war knife.

For a more comprehensive listing of swords types, see list of swords

Parts of the Western sword

Basic parts of a sword


The blade is the cutting part of a sword. In single-edged swords, the non-cutting edge is known as the back.

The blade may also have grooves or fullers, also known as "blood grooves." The purpose of these fullers is not to act as gutters for blood (as was once thought), but to lighten the blade while allowing it to retain its strength, in the same manner as an "I" beam in construction.

The hilt is the handle of a sword, and consists of the guard, the grip, and the pommel. It may also have a tassel or sword knot.

The scabbard is the case that the sword is kept in when not in use.

The ricasso or shoulder is a short section of blade immediately forward of the guard. Most swords have no ricasso. The ricasso is not sharpened, which sometimes allows a finger to be wrapped around the blade for better control. On some large weapons, such as the German longsword, the ricasso was covered with leather and might be gripped in one hand to make the weapon more easily wielded in close quarters combat. The maker's mark is normally to be found on the ricasso. On Japanese blades it is found on the tang under the handle.

The tang is the part of the blade extending from the top of the blade through the hilt and the grip. In a rat-tail tang the sword is held together by a nut screwed onto the tang above the pommel (in 20th-century and later construction), or the tang is peened over a nut on the end of the pommel (in traditional construction). It is one of the weakest types of tang. A "full" tang is the strongest type. In a full-tang sword, the tang is the same width as the sword blade. As the blade doesn't narrow where it joins the handle, it maintains all its strength.

The CoP (Center of Percussion), also known as the Sweet spot, is the part of the blade that can deliver the strongest blow with the least vibration. Most swords will have two of these points along the blade. The secondary one nearest to the hilt is a particularly poor point to have struck by another sword, if the user should make the mistake of believing popular mythology and using a sword edge to parry. Being struck at this point will allow the maximum force to be transmitted and is how a sword may suffer catastrophic failure.

From the 18th Century onwards swords which were intended to be used for cutting, i.e. with an 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 blow. European swords had a radius of curvature of around a metre as they were intended to be used at arm's length. Middle Eastern swords had a smaller radius as they were intended to be used with the arm bent. A significant defect that many European swords in the 19th Century had was the use of metal scabbards which tended to make them blunt, and consequently gave Eastern swords a fearsome reputation amongst European troops.

Swords intended for stabbing were normally straight, as it made accurate handling easier. European light cavalry (and infantry officers, who were usually on horseback) invariably had curved swords for slashing rather than straight ones for stabbing because if a thrust from a moving horse missed then it was hard to make a horse go backwards to repeat the thrust. This was particularly important when they were involved in skirmishes, which was the normal form that their fighting took. Heavy cavalry, which tended to charge en masse and not skirmish, usually had straight swords for thrusting.

External links

da:Sværd de:Schwert es:Espada eo:Glavo fr:Épée la:Gladius ja:剣 pl:Miecz (broń) pt:Espada fi:Miekka sv:Svärd sl:Meč zh-cn:剑


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