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Old 20th April 2006, 06:23 PM   #29
fearn
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Join Date: Dec 2004
Posts: 1,247
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Hi Fernando,

That makes sense to me. I like your derivation of sickle, BTW.

One note about the falx--it's a tool too. Long handled, curved-bladed choppers were used for coppicing oaks and other trees certainly by Medieval times, and probably back into the Bronze Age (coppicing is an *old* art in Europe). The English brown bill is similar to the falx, and both are similar to the "bank blades" one can buy at a modern hardware store. All of these blades were more popular when coppicing was a major rural industry, and before pruning shears became popular. You can still find them around, for use in clearing brush. In fact, one of them is shown in May's National Geographic, where it's being using by the Inupiat to cut up a bowhead whale. But I digress...

After wandering through that linguistic thicket, it's interesting that so many cultures have some broadly defined term(s) for work cutters (i.e. knife, dao, parang, etc), sometimes weaponized (i.e. combat knife), and specific terms for weapon blades that have little utilitarian use (i.e. longsword, jian, katana, gladius, etc). Probably there's a basic bit of human psychology in there.

F
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