Knife in the context of Pocket knives

A sword is an edged, bladed weapon intended for manual cutting or thrusting. Its blade, longer than a knife or dagger, is attached to a hilt and can be straight or curved. A thrusting sword tends to have a straighter blade with a pointed tip. A slashing sword is more likely to be curved and to have a sharpened cutting edge on one or both sides of the blade. Many swords are designed for both thrusting and slashing. The precise definition of a sword varies by historical epoch and geographic region.

Historically, the sword developed in the Bronze Age, evolving from the dagger; the earliest specimens date to about 1600 BC. The later Iron Age sword remained fairly short and without a crossguard. The spatha, as it developed in the Late Roman army, became the predecessor of the European sword of the Middle Ages, at first adopted as the Migration Period sword, and only in the High Middle Ages, developed into the classical arming sword with crossguard. The word sword continues the Old English, sweord.

Decapitation is the total separation of the head from the body. Such an injury is invariably fatal to humans and all vertebrate animals, since it deprives the brain of oxygenated blood by way of severing the jugular vein and common carotid artery, while all other organs are deprived of the involuntary functions that are needed for the body to function.The term beheading refers to the act of deliberately decapitating a person, either as a means of murder or as an execution; it may be performed with an axe, sword, or knife, or by mechanical means such as a guillotine. An executioner who carries out executions by beheading is sometimes called a headsman. Accidental decapitation can be the result of an explosion, a car or industrial accident, improperly administered execution by hanging or other violent injury. The national laws of Saudi Arabia and Yemen permit beheading. Under Sharia, which exclusively applies to Muslims, beheading is also a legal punishment in Zamfara State, Nigeria. In practice, Saudi Arabia is the only country that continues to behead its offenders regularly as a punishment for capital crimes. Cases of decapitation by suicidal hanging, suicide by train decapitation and by guillotine are known.

Less commonly, decapitation can also refer to the removal of the head from a body that is already dead. This might be done to take the head as a trophy, as a secondary stage of an execution by hanging, for public display, to make the deceased more difficult to identify, for cryonics, or for other, more esoteric reasons.

A dagger is a fighting knife with a very sharp point and usually one or two sharp edges, typically designed or capable of being used as a cutting or thrusting weapon. Daggers have been used throughout human history for close combat confrontations, and many cultures have used adorned daggers in ritual and ceremonial contexts. The dagger's distinctive shape and historic usage have made it iconic and symbolic. In the modern sense, a dagger is designed for close-proximity combat or self-defense; due to its use in historic weapon assemblages, it has associations with assassination and murder. However, double-edged knives play different roles in different social contexts.

A wide variety of thrusting knives have been described as daggers, including knives that feature only a single cutting edge, such as the European rondel dagger or the Afghan pesh-kabz, or, in some instances, no cutting edge at all, such as the stiletto of the Renaissance. However, in the last hundred years or so, in most contexts, a dagger has specific definable characteristics, including a short blade with a sharply tapered point, a central spine or fuller, and usually two cutting edges sharpened the entire length of the blade, or nearly so. Most daggers also feature a full crossguard to keep the hand from riding forwards onto the sharpened blade edges.

The hilt (rarely called a haft or shaft) is the handle of a knife, dagger, sword, or bayonet, consisting of a guard, grip, and pommel. The guard may contain a crossguard or quillons. A tassel or sword knot may be attached to the guard or pommel.

Cutting is the separation or opening of a physical object through the application of an acutely directed force.

Implements commonly used for cutting are the knife and saw, or in medicine and science the scalpel and microtome. However, any sufficiently sharp object is capable of cutting if it has a hardness sufficiently larger than the object being cut, and if it is applied with sufficient force. Even liquids can be used to cut things when applied with sufficient force (see water jet cutter).

A machete (/məˈʃɛti/; Spanish pronunciation: [maˈtʃete]) is a broad blade originating from Central America, It used either as an agricultural implement similar to an axe, or in combat like a long-bladed knife. The blade is typically 30 to 66 centimetres (12 to 26 in) long and usually under 3 millimetres (1⁄8 in) thick. In the Spanish language, the word is possibly a diminutive form of the word macho, which was used to refer to sledgehammers. Alternatively, its origin may be machaera, the name given by the Greeks and Romans to the falcata. It is the origin of the English language equivalent term matchet, though this is rarely used. In much of the English-speaking Caribbean, such as Jamaica, Barbados, Guyana, Grenada, and Trinidad and Tobago, the term cutlass is used for these agricultural tools.

Campobasso (UK: /ˌkæmpoʊˈbæsoʊ/, Italian: [ˌkampoˈbasso] ; Campobassan: Cambuàsce [ˌkambuˈwaʃʃə]) is a city and comune in southern Italy, the capital of the region of Molise and of the province of Campobasso. It is located in the high basin of the Biferno river, surrounded by Sannio and Matese mountains.

Campobasso is renowned for the craftsmanship of blades (including scissors and knives), a fact well documented since the 14th century. It is also famous for the production of pears and scamorza (cheese). The city is home of the University of Molise and of the Archdiocese of Campobasso-Boiano.

A bayonet (from Old French bayonette, now spelt baïonnette) is a knife, dagger, sword, or spike-shaped melee weapon designed to be mounted on the end of the barrel of a rifle, carbine, musket or similar long firearm, allowing the gun to be used as an improvised spear in close combat.

The term is derived from the town of Bayonne in southwestern France, where bayonets were supposedly first used by Basques in the 17th century. From the early 17th to the early 20th century, it was an infantry melee weapon used for both offensive and defensive tactics, usually when charging in mass formations (human wave attacks). In contemporary times, bayonets are considered a weapon of last resort, and are rarely used in combat, although they are still used for ceremonial purposes (e.g, military parades).

Fire hardening is the process of removing moisture from wood, changing its structure and material properties, by charring it over or directly in a fire or a bed of coals. This has been thought to make a point, like that of a spear or arrow, or an edge, like that of a knife or axe, more durable and efficient for its use as a tool or weapon. An initial study suggests that the process might reduce the work of fracture of the wood by 36% but would substantially reduce the time needed to make a spear point.

Fire hardening may be done before, after, or during the manufacturing of the wooden tip. Longer procedures involving greasing and polishing with stones to impregnate the wood with fats and oils and silica may improve the effects of the process. Fire hardening was first developed by primitive humans at least 400,000 years ago, which was long before either flint or stone points were being made.

A pocketknife (also spelled as pocket knife) is a knife with one or more blades that fold into the handle. It is also known as a jackknife, or a folding knife. It may be referred to as a penknife, though a penknife may also be a specific kind of pocketknife. A typical blade length is 5 to 15 centimetres (2 to 6 in).

Pocketknives are versatile tools, and may be used for anything from whittling and woodcarving, to butchering small game, gutting and filleting small fish, aiding in the preparation of tinder and kindling for fires, boring holes in soft material, to opening an envelope, cutting twine, slicing fruits and vegetables or as a means of self-defense.

A hunting knife is a knife used during hunting for preparing the game to be used as food by skinning the animal and cutting up its meat. It is different from the hunting dagger which was traditionally used to kill wild game.

Some hunting knives are adapted for other uses in the wild, such as a camp knife, which hunters may use as machetes or hatchets when those specific tools are not available. In this case, their function is similar to a survival knife.

A kitchen knife is any knife that is intended to be used in food preparation, as opposed to a table knife used when eating, as part of a set of cutlery. While much of this work can be accomplished with a few general-purpose knives — notably a large chef's knife and a smaller serrated blade utility knife — there are also many specialized knives that are designed for specific tasks such as a tough cleaver, a small paring knife, and a bread knife. Kitchen knives can be made from several different materials, though the most common is a hardened steel blade with a wooden handle.

Historically, knives were made in "knife cities" that are noted for being the best at their production in that country with the pre-emininent, in Europe, being: Sheffield in Yorkshire, North of England; Thiers, Puy-de-Dôme in the Auvergne of France; Solingen in the Northern Rhineland of Germany; and Eskilstuna of Södermanland in Sweden. Each of these produced knives in a styles particular to the city, with Thiers especially being noted for the French point of Laguiole and steak knives. Whereas in Japan, there are many dispersed centres of kitchen knife production due to diversification that followed in wake of legislation restricting the production of sword-making. These are Tsubame-Sanjō in Niigata Prefecture, Seki in Gifu Prefecture, Sakai in Osaka Prefecture, Takefu-Echizen in Fukui Prefecture, and Tosa in Kōchi Prefecture amongst a number of others. Each area have their own style of knife, with Sakai in Osaka favouring the "sheep's foot" or drop point, in contrast to the square-tipped style of Edo, modern-day Tokyo.

A cleaver is a large knife that varies in its shape but usually resembles a rectangular-bladed tomahawk. It is largely used as a kitchen or butcher knife and is mostly intended for splitting up large pieces of soft bones and slashing through thick pieces of meat. The knife's broad side can also be used for crushing in food preparation (such as garlic) and can also be used to scoop up chopped items.

Tools described as cleavers have been in use since the Acheulean period. "Cleaver" was commonly spelled clever in the late 17th century.

The pesh-kabz or peshkabz (Persian: پیش قبض, Hindi: पेश क़ब्ज़) is a type of Indo-Persian knife designed to penetrate mail armour and other types of armour. The word is also spelled pesh-qabz or pish-ghabz and means "fore-grip" in the Persian language; it was borrowed into the Hindustani language. Originally created during Safavid Persia, it became widespread in Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent during the Mughal period.

A fuller is a rounded or beveled longitudinal groove or slot along the flat side of a blade (e.g., a sword, knife, or bayonet) that serves to both lighten and stiffen the blade, when considering its reduced weight.

Cutting or grinding a fuller into an existing blade will decrease its absolute stiffness due to the removal of material, but much of the strength remains due to the geometry of its shape. When the groove is forged into the blade, it achieves a similar reduction in weight with a relatively small reduction in strength without the wasted material produced by grinding. When impressed during forging, it may be made using a blacksmithing tool that is also called a fuller, a form of spring swage.

A French curve is a template usually made from metal, wood or plastic composed of many different curved segments. It is used in manual drafting and in fashion design to draw smooth curves of varying radii. The curve is placed on the drawing material, and a pencil, knife or other implement is traced around its curves to produce the desired result. They were invented by the German mathematician Ludwig Burmester and are also known as Burmester (curve) set.

In archaeological terminology, a projectile point is an object that was hafted to a weapon that was capable of being thrown or projected, such as a javelin, dart, or arrow. They are thus different from weapons presumed to have been kept in the hand, such as knives, spears, axes, hammers, and maces.

Stone tools, including projectile points, were often lost or discarded and are relatively plentiful, especially at archaeological sites. They provide useful clues to the human past, including prehistoric trade. A distinctive form of point, identified though lithic analysis of the way it was made, is often a key diagnostic factor in identifying an archaeological industry or culture. Scientific techniques exist to track the specific kinds of rock or minerals that were used to make stone tools in various regions back to their original sources.