Five Ball Hilt spadroons

[Jim McDougall]

Originally Posted by Hotspur

Straight sabres can well turn into a ninja vs pirate debate. Looking far enough back to the origin of the term sabre will eventually go back to an eastern European term simply meaning to cut. What cuts better? Straight or curved? Pirates win that debate I believe even the Wiki for sabre acknowledged my insistence that the root of the word simply meant "to cut".

Neumann seems like a long lost uncle to me and is fond of confusing any issue. A straight sabre is simply a straight cutter (see above) and perhaps a tongue in cheek to keep the beer (and/or popcorn) flowing.

I may be missing my mind more than anything else but I believe the bastardization of the latin to use the term of spadroon may well be more Germanic in thought.

Anyway, having started to go through some lost drive files; I wanted to share another gaper with seven balls. It looks to me to be another optioned Ames casting (or not).

Cheers

Hotspur; I'm pretty sure I have more examples of the 7s as well

Well said Glen! I think we can all recall the knight vs. ninjas or Samurai or whatever it was debates! which could easily carry on ad infinitum.
Arms and armour terminology as I earlier noted, when trying to examine etymologically, is completely maddening, and typically is fruitless in meaningful discussion of the weapon itself.

My interest in the term spadroon is simply out of extremely long standing curiosity in reviewing the fascinating glossary of such terms, and the 'straight sabre' debate goes with the backsword/broadsword what is a short sword what is a dirk etc. puzzles.

Good suggestion on the Germanic possibility for the 'oon' suffix, which I hope the linguists lurking out there might address.

Neumann is truly an intriguing guy, and I had a wonderful conversation with him at Timonium last March. It is always exciting to see the kind of passion he carries for his field of study, and hearing the stories behind his now venerable reference and its writing.

I'm really enjoying this discussion on these fascinating swords, and hope we can continue learning more on them. Thank you for sharing all these great examples.....and I hope you can get the gremlins outa your computer

All the best,
Jim

[fearn]

More on oon (shortening this up, does this make me a moron?):

Can't vouch for it's total correctness, but here's someone's take on where "oon" came from in English (link)

"The Romance languages use an -one or -on suffix to mean a larger or augmented version of the base word; it's often modified to "-oon" in English. In addition to "trombone", other examples are balloon (big ball), bassoon (deep bass), medallion (large medal), galleon (a ship larger than a galley), cannons and canneloni (big canes or hollow tubes — cannoli are little ones), saloon (a large salle, room), and so on. A squadron is a group of soldiers bigger than a squad. (Squad itself is ex-quadra, a square.) The original meaning of cartoon was a poster-sized image, from Italian carta-one, large paper, and a baboon is etymologically a "big baby". [13Nov08] A macaroon is etymologically a large macaroni, although the taste is now somewhat different. [19Jun09] French bouffer meant to swell or puff up; this led to both buffoon (a clown) and the bouffont hair style. Buffer in the sense of "cushion" or "shock absorber" is also from this root. This has been generalized to anything "in the middle" — buffer state, a computer's buffer memory, and so on.
...
Just to aggravate us, French sometimes used the -on or -oon suffix to mean smaller, not larger. A platoon is French peloton, a very little ball (pellet is already a diminutive), and a pontoon seems to have originally been a "small bridge" or maybe "temporary bridge" — Latin pons. The French word for "small cat" is chaton, which has been borrowed into English as kitten."

Not sure it helps, but don't ya love language?

Best,

F

[Jim McDougall]

Hi Fearn,
Thats amazing ! Why couldnt they just call these things a straight sword or classical sword or whatever....but noooooo! Somebody had to get fancy and use this lah dee dah term
It really is kinda fun to look into words sometimes though....even though this one kind of makes ya want to........swoon!!!
Sorry.

All the best,
Jim

[Hotspur]

Smore. Needless to say, I like eagles. There are a couple of beady eyes in one shot that show new reproductions that are surfacing and aged as old. Some of the other hilts are not strictly beaded but follow a trend of matched elements and even single tribute to a bead. Some are some very French hilts and show bead and or lozenge elements. Still just stylin' as I see it. One reverse p hilt with no beading on a late American flavor spadroon. Also one single example by itself because it looks like one that is moving on the market again. Some of them have become kind of like good friends as they make the rounds.





Cheers

Hotspur; of course, offered for education purposes only and have been harvested all over the net

[Gonzalo G]

Originally Posted by fearn

The Romance languages use an -one or -on suffix to mean a larger or augmented version of the base word; it's often modified to "-oon" in English. In addition to "trombone", other examples are balloon (big ball), bassoon (deep bass), medallion (large medal), galleon (a ship larger than a galley), cannons and canneloni (big canes or hollow tubes — cannoli are little ones), saloon (a large salle, room), and so on. A squadron is a group of soldiers bigger than a squad. (Squad itself is ex-quadra, a square.) The original meaning of cartoon was a poster-sized image, from Italian carta-one, large paper, and a baboon is etymologically a "big baby". [13Nov08] A macaroon is etymologically a large macaroni, although the taste is now somewhat different. [19Jun09] French bouffer meant to swell or puff up; this led to both buffoon (a clown) and the bouffont hair style. Buffer in the sense of "cushion" or "shock absorber" is also from this root. This has been generalized to anything "in the middle" — buffer state, a computer's buffer memory, and so on.
...
Just to aggravate us, French sometimes used the -on or -oon suffix to mean smaller, not larger. A platoon is French peloton, a very little ball (pellet is already a diminutive), and a pontoon seems to have originally been a "small bridge" or maybe "temporary bridge" — Latin pons. The French word for "small cat" is chaton, which has been borrowed into English as kitten."

Not sure it helps, but don't ya love language?

Best,

F

Fearn, you are right, the romance languajes, have this characteristics. But ´peloton´in spanish means big ball, and the word ´pelota´is not french. Pellet is not a romance word, but an alglosaxon word taken by several languajes. Ponton is not the bridge, but the name of certain type of elements designed to make a floating bridge once they are ensambled. The result is called a pontoon bridge or a bridge made of pontoons. But chaton is alright a small cat or a cat´s puppet. Without any reference or proof, I don´t see a ´germanic´presence in the making of the word ´spadroon´, since it seems it has no resemblance in any way with this language, which I know a little.
Regards

Gonzalo