Cutlass
A cutlass is a short, broad sabre or slashing sword, with a straight or slightly curved blade sharpened on the cutting edge, and a hilt often featuring a solid cupped or basket-shaped guard. It was a common naval weapon.
Etymology
The word cutlass developed from a 17th-century English variation of coutelas, a 16th-century French word for a machete-like blade (the modern French for "knife", in general, is "couteau"; the word was often spelled "cuttoe" in 17th and 18th century English). The French word is itself a corruption of the Italian coltellaccio, or "large knife", a short, broad-bladed sabre popular in Italy during the 16th century The word comes from coltello, "knife", derived ultimately from Latin cultellus meaning "small knife."
In the English-speaking Caribbean, the term "cutlass" is used as a word for machete.
History and use
Origin
The cutlass is a 17th-century descendent of the edged short sword exemplified by the medieval falchion.
Woodsmen and soldiers in the 17th and 18th centuries used a similar short and broad backsword called a hanger, or in German a messer, meaning "knife". Often occurring with the full tang more typical of knives than swords in Europe, which is commonly believed to reflect a legal claim to nonweapon status, these blades may ultimately derive through the falchion (facon, falcon) from the seax.
