A sword consists of a blade and a handle, which is itself made up of a hilt, or grip, and a pommel, or counterweight. A sword blade has one or two edges for striking and cutting, and a point for thrusting. The word "sword" comes from the Old English sweord, meaning to wound or hurt.
Humans developed weapons from sharpened flint tools, and in the Bronze Age short-bladed weapons such as daggers were used. It was then impractical to make bronze swords more than 3 feet (90 cm) long, but with the development of smelting technology and stronger alloys, longer iron swords became possible from about 1500 B.C.E.
The Chinese single-edged steel sword appeared in the third century B.C.E. By Roman times the hilt was distinct from the short, flat blade, and by the European Middle Ages the sword had acquired its main basic shape and a variety of designs were devised to fulfill different functions. Medieval swords had a double- edged blade, a large hilt, and protective guard and were designed to be gripped in both hands. A curved blade for cutting, used in Asia, was introduced into Europe by the Turks in the sixteenth century, and in the West was modified into the cavalry saber.
Hunting swords and the naval cutlass developed from the sixteenth-century "hanger," with its convex cutting edge, as did the bayonet, developed in the seventeenth century for use with firearms. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the shorter "smallsword" became a fashion accessory. The smallsword and the rapier remained popular dueling swords well into the eighteenth century.
