cutlass, n.
(ˈkʌtləs)
Forms: 6 coutelace, 7 coutelas, cuttelas, cuttleass, 8 cutlace, 7– cutlass. Also corruptly β. 7 cutleax, cuttleaxe, cotellax; γ. 8– cutlash.
[a. F. coutelas, augm. of couteau (coutel) knife; cognate with It. coltellaccio: Lat. type *cultellāceum. The original coutel-as, coutel-ace, has undergone many perversions in English under the influence of popular etymology, which has transformed the first part into cuttle, curtal, curtle, curt, cut, and the second into ax, axe. A later change has made cutlass into cut-lash. The forms cuttle-ax and cut-lash are included here; see curtelace, curtal-axe, curt-axe, in their alphabetical places.]
1. A short sword with a flat wide slightly curved blade, adapted more for cutting than for thrusting; now esp. the sword with which sailors are armed.
| α 1594 Kyd Cornelio i. in Hazl. Dodsley V. 189 Arm'd with his blood-besmeared keen coute-lace. 1603 Knolles Hist. Turks (1621) 1333 A Cuttelas verie curiously wrought, and inricht with stone. 1633 T. James Voy. 67 The boyes with Cuttleasses, must cut boughes. 1678 tr. Gaya's Arms of War 32 A kind of Cutlass, which they called Cinacis, and in English Cimeter. 1719 De Foe Crusoe (1840) I. xvii. 300 A great cutlass (as the seamen call it) or sword. 1825 Waterton Wand. S. Amer. i. i. 92 With a cutlass to sever the small bush-ropes. 1868 Regul. & Ord. Army ¶1299 The sailors armed with cutlasses are to proceed to the hatchways. |
| β [1598 Florio, Coltellaccio, a curtelax or chopping knife.] 1611 ― A cutleax, a hanger. Also a chopping knife, a great knife. 1630 J. Taylor (Water-P.) Laugh & be fat Wks. ii. 79/1 The bloudy cutthroat cuttleaxe of swaggering Mars. 1647 N. Bacon Disc. Govt. Eng. i. lxxi. (1739) 194 Either a Cotellax, or such-like Weapon. |
| γ 1704 Collect. Voy. (Church.) III. 779/1 Men arm'd with Cutlashes. 1725 Pope Odyss. xiv. 87 Of two, his cutlash launch'd the spouting blood. 1757 Smollett Reprisal ii. viii, A good cutlash in my hand. 1867 Smyth Sailor's Word-bk., Cutlas..the small-handed swords supplied to the navy, the cutlash of Jack. |
2. Comb.,
cutlass-blade, etc.;
cutlass-proof adj.;
cutlass-fish, a name of a species of fish, the Silvery hair-tail, so called from its shape.
| 1711 E. Ward Quix. I. 26 That he conceiv'd 'twas Cutlace proof. 1827 O. W. Roberts Centr. Amer. 300 The Indians constantly require..moscheates, or cutlass blades. 1884 G. B. Goode Nat. Hist. Aquatic Anim. 335 The name ‘Cutlass-fish’, which is current for the same species [sc. Trichiurus lepturus] in the British West Indies. 1963 P. H. Greenwood Norman's Hist. Fishes (ed. 2) ii. 14 At the other extreme are fishes with long bodies, which may be..very much compressed, as in the ..Cutlass-fishes. |
Hence
ˈcutlass v. nonce-wd., to hew with a cutlass;
ˈcutlassed ppl. a., furnished with cutlasses.
| 1890 Harper's Mag. Feb. 413/1 He will cutlass his way through forest to the summit of peaks to find particular herbs. 1839 Morn. Herald 11 July, The nucleus of a cutlassed gendarmerie. |