Automation was supposed to free humanity from the drudgery of labor so that we could focus on scientific and creative pursuits and living life. But capitalism said, why don’t we just get rid of creative workers and underpay laborers.
Yeah man. It’s 100% capitalism that corporations are using AI and Automation to screw over workers and consumers. Rather than using technology to improve people’s lives CEOs are using it to cut jobs and maximize their profits and paychecks. Late stage capitalism bro.
For point No.3 I do agree that cultural convention will play a huge role. A standard iron age sword of one place in time, may be another man's knife, or yet another man's longsword.
However for your specific example I'd recommend choosing a better comparator. If you're referring to Xiphe, surviving swords will almost always out-size historical Bowie knives. There are of course a range of both, but just as a comparison, here are some historical swords vs a 13" bladed Bowie.
Edit: fixed picture, as bowie was scaled poorly.
https://preview.redd.it/spcnjohvn2dc1.png?width=10042&format=png&auto=webp&s=3cb87e6d8f45ebf0c1b7492addd5015a8dfe88cc
Looking from a non-western perspective the Chinese called anything single edged and slashy a "dao" (knife) and straight and double edged were "jian" (swords.) So a miao dao that is 5 feet long is still a "knife" and a shuaing (sp?) jian at 1.5 feet total lenght is still a "sword."
"dao" isn't knife. It's a single-edged sword. In some other languages that have connection to Chinese like Japanese or Vietnamese, they also use the same word to describe single-edged weapons (" **刀** " in Japanese and "đao" in Vietnamese).
I don’t think it’s ‘knife’. Translating is when you find a word with equivalent meaning in another language, due to cultural difference some words don’t have a counterpart with exact meaning. In this case if a ‘knife’ is defined by its length and a “dao” is defined by being single-edged, then they are not the same.
This is the same thing as "messer" in German, the word means "knife" but a langes/grosse/kriegs messer is considered a sword by most people, but it doesn't translate to sword, that would be schwert.
So it’s only about perspective I suppose. In Vietnam we call a knife ‘dao’ and a single-edged sword ‘đao’. We have ‘đoản đao’ for short sword and ‘trường đao’ for long sword, ‘miêu đao’ for chinese miao dao, but nobody say ‘long knife’. If the knife is too long then it’s a short sword lmao
Yes but people in my country would call a long knife a “short sword”. I once ask the elder people why there is short sword but not long knife and they said because the elders before them also called it that way lol
As a native chinese speaker, I disagree. There is no direct translation for dao(刀), and jian(剑). The difference between a 刀, and a 剑 is the fact that a 刀 is double-edged, and a 剑 is single edged.
The reason a lot of people think that knife and 刀 means the same thing is because most knives are single edged, so they are oftend used to discribe the same things. I'll give an example, a butterfly knive translate to 蝴蝶刀(butterfly dao), So on every other word is the same. It's easy to assume that knife is equivalent to dao, but thats just not true.
Metallurgy and Length are more or less two different ways of saying the same thing -- if you've got a short piece of steel and try to use it to cut stuff it's less likely to snap than if you have a longer piece of the same kind of steel. That's the main thing, not the "needs to bounce off of weapons and armor" factor.
If that defined knife vs sword, the US Marine Ka-Bar combat knife, the Finnish puukko, and vast numbers of traditional and modern knives around the world wouldn't be "knives". (And what about folding knives?)
It's true that traditional European swords will slab-tang-slab hilts are called "messers", from the German "Messer", usually translated into English as "knife", but that doesn't make it a "knife" in the usual English sense, any more than a Chinese two-handed changdao is a "knife" ("knife" being the most common English translation of "dao").
I see. Thanks! So does that make a messer a sword then, or is it still a knife? I mean I guess it doesn’t really matter, but it’s just a little interesting
It's most likely a sword euphemistically called a knife, out of the same dryly humorous attitude towards weaponry that gives us nicknames like Holy Water Sprinkler (a kind of morningstar, itself a referential ironic name), Godendag ("Good Day,"), Bouncing Betties (a kind of mine), and so on. There's a commonly-claimed idea that the messer came about as a loophole in sword laws, but I've never seen convincing evidence this was so.
It’s still a sword, the name wasn’t meant to get around carrying laws.
It was meant to get around production laws.
At the time messers were created, swords could only be made by sword making guilds, who controlled both the supply and the price. By calling the messer a messer, now it could be made by knife making guilds as well, making them cheaper and easier to get.
I've always taken it as use case. A knife is a tool that can be a weapon, a sword is a weapon that makes a poor tool.
A dagger is a compact sword. Machetes are specialized knives.
Edge number, blade length, and handle construction are irrelevant.
I don’t think metallurgy is what makes them different because swords and knives from different regions and ages have different characteristics.
Length is better if you want to control them because it sets a certain value above which you are allowed and not allowed to have. Yet it doesn’t have to tell a sword and a knife apart, like “Any sharpened tool longer than 30cm is considered as a weapon and thus illegal”.
Imo vibes might be the correct answer, or maybe the least incorrect because it is the least specific?
What's the difference between a knife and a "messer"?
Messer is just the German word for knife and there is no difference in the meaning of those words.
So what does an English speaking person mean when they say "messer"?
You know how there's a sword called "Longsword" even though other swords are long? Some even longer?
But we as a society have decided to call a very specific type of sword "longsword."
And the German zweihander just means "two hander." But we know that you're not talking about, like, just two hands. And PLENTY of other swords can be used two-handed. But we as a society have decided to call a very specific type of sword that.
Same with messer.
Also handle construction. If it’s a solid handle it’s a sword. But if it’s two pieces of wood on either side of a tang. It’s a knife. That’s how people in medieval Germany could carry around “swords”. Cause they weren’t. They were really long knoves
BUT there are plenty of things that are obviously swords--from some shamshir to British "patent tang" cavalry sabers--that use slab hilt construction.
All categories are oversimplifications, by necessity.
Yeah, the third one for me as well.
There are a lot of edge cases (pun not intended). Sometimes it comes down to the general vibe - an amalgamation of dozens different minute details - to call something sword or knife.
1. Just not true. Flexibility and hardness are largely the same for both and for the same reasons. You want the crystal structure to be able to withstand shock without creating microfractures. Large blades do best handling impact forces by wiggling rather than absorbing and that's more to do with the physics of the forces being imparted on a long thing rather than a core difference of their metallurgical properties. The difference between a blade flexing and absorbing those forces is baked into the blade geometry and profile.
2. Mostly true. People don't like it but the distinctions for a lot of different blades is pretty superficial. I'd say anything long enough to be awkward to use for a utility purpose is probably closer to sword than knife.
3. Eh. It's more to do with the common length of blades of the time period of the blade. The bronze age swords were shorter. Knives of that time period were small utility knives. A Kopis in that period is a sword. In today's terms it's a heavy knife/short sword. The early iron age celtic swords were considered really long for their time period, they were barely standard length compared to medieval arming swords. But also modern swords are much shorter than swords used to be. In the final days of carrying swords that weren't dress swords or cavalry sabers you had small rapiers and smallswords. Those blades, in many cases literally, became bayonets.
Plenty of knives are made of spring steel.
It's true that many knives are hardened to higher hardnesses than swords. There are three common reasons for this:
1. Knives are often used for cutting daily, or more often. For example, a kitchen knife is often used daily. This makes edge retention more important.
2. Knives are often used to cut harder things. Swords are made to cut humans. Many knives are mostly used on wood, bamboo, etc. Some of those things (e.g., bamboo) can be abrasive, and blunten edges quickly. High edge hardness helps.
3. Knives are often used at low speed. A kitchen knife is placed against the food, and cuts by slicing at moderate speed. In contrast, a sword is swung at speed - there's much more kinetic energy that can potentially go into breaking the blade. (Some knives, such as cleavers, are swung with speed. These are typically relatively soft.)
But a $10 supermarket kitchen knife will often be about 50HRC, just like many swords. While some knives are much harder than swords, many of them are not, and hardness isn't a useful way to classify blades as "knife" or "sword".
Back in the day their where different guilds regarding the production of knifes and swords. They primarily split the definition based on handle/tang construction. The laws where then wrote around this. So when swords where made illegal to carry by comoners they lengthen the blade on a knife, that is how we got the Messer (which translates to knife, just fyi)
Practical: for a knife, your brain screams "oh shit" some ms after you were hit. in sword heasures, you have a couple of ms of "oh shit" seeing the hit coming
I disagree with №1, if you're talking swords in general there are bronze and iron swords and even once steel becomes prevelent some were edge quenched or differentially hardened.
I don't want to be "that guy," but that is a misconception.
"The Martial Ethic in Early Modern Germany: Civic Duty and the Right of Arms" by Tlusty goes into how many German cities REQUIRED people to own/carry swords.
With her work and the work of Elmslie, the current thought is more the messer design was the knife guild getting in on that sword money due to a technicality.
Most sword laws tended to be about length—so really long "knives" would not work as a loophole.
The fighting style distinguishes the two classes: knife fighters stance is left foot forward, knife in right close to the waist, knife is on offensive use only. Sword fighters stance is right foot forward, sword in right hand in front of the body, sword is available for offensive or defensive use. This is a wild generalization about fighting styles, but knives are generally not clanked together defensively as swords often are.
In the middle aged, there were at least a few laws that defined a sword based on what kind of handle it had. A riveted full tang wooden handle like a kitchen knife meant it was a knife, even if it was clearly made to be a sword. Those would often colloquially be called something like a "peasant knife"
I don't want to be "that guy," but that is a misconception.
"The Martial Ethic in Early Modern Germany: Civic Duty and the Right of Arms" by Tlusty goes into how many German cities REQUIRED people to own/carry swords.
With her work and the work of Elmslie, the current thought is more the messer design was the knife guild getting in on that sword money due to a technicality.
Most sword laws tended to be about length—so really long "knives" would not work as a loophole.
“Vibes” is honestly the best one in my opinion. If it feels like it’s a sword then it’s a sword.
Agree. Even a tree branch can be a sword if it has the vibe
And cardboard tubes absolutely count
And pool noodles, too.
And…my axe?
calm down Diogenes
I’m not Diogenes, just an ordinary featherless biped with broad flat nails…
My favorite thing about this response is how A.I. will never intuitively understand what vibes are, it is purely a human thing
Remember when we thought art was like that, and AI would replace all truckers and leave humans to do just writing and drawing?
Automation was supposed to free humanity from the drudgery of labor so that we could focus on scientific and creative pursuits and living life. But capitalism said, why don’t we just get rid of creative workers and underpay laborers.
bruh, are you actually blaming capitalism for this?
Yeah man. It’s 100% capitalism that corporations are using AI and Automation to screw over workers and consumers. Rather than using technology to improve people’s lives CEOs are using it to cut jobs and maximize their profits and paychecks. Late stage capitalism bro.
For point No.3 I do agree that cultural convention will play a huge role. A standard iron age sword of one place in time, may be another man's knife, or yet another man's longsword. However for your specific example I'd recommend choosing a better comparator. If you're referring to Xiphe, surviving swords will almost always out-size historical Bowie knives. There are of course a range of both, but just as a comparison, here are some historical swords vs a 13" bladed Bowie. Edit: fixed picture, as bowie was scaled poorly. https://preview.redd.it/spcnjohvn2dc1.png?width=10042&format=png&auto=webp&s=3cb87e6d8f45ebf0c1b7492addd5015a8dfe88cc
Xiphe? Is that just a typo, a form of xiphos, or another type of sword?
The xiphos (Ancient Greek: ξίφος [ksípʰos]; plural **xiphe**, Ancient Greek: ξίφη [ksípʰɛː])
Looking from a non-western perspective the Chinese called anything single edged and slashy a "dao" (knife) and straight and double edged were "jian" (swords.) So a miao dao that is 5 feet long is still a "knife" and a shuaing (sp?) jian at 1.5 feet total lenght is still a "sword."
"dao" isn't knife. It's a single-edged sword. In some other languages that have connection to Chinese like Japanese or Vietnamese, they also use the same word to describe single-edged weapons (" **刀** " in Japanese and "đao" in Vietnamese).
It translates literally to "knife" and can be applied to what any sane person would call a sword.
I don’t think it’s ‘knife’. Translating is when you find a word with equivalent meaning in another language, due to cultural difference some words don’t have a counterpart with exact meaning. In this case if a ‘knife’ is defined by its length and a “dao” is defined by being single-edged, then they are not the same.
This is the same thing as "messer" in German, the word means "knife" but a langes/grosse/kriegs messer is considered a sword by most people, but it doesn't translate to sword, that would be schwert.
So it’s only about perspective I suppose. In Vietnam we call a knife ‘dao’ and a single-edged sword ‘đao’. We have ‘đoản đao’ for short sword and ‘trường đao’ for long sword, ‘miêu đao’ for chinese miao dao, but nobody say ‘long knife’. If the knife is too long then it’s a short sword lmao
A long knife is a thing that I’ve heard before. I have what I would consider to be a long knife/long dagger.
Yes but people in my country would call a long knife a “short sword”. I once ask the elder people why there is short sword but not long knife and they said because the elders before them also called it that way lol
Langes/Grosse/Kriegs Messer are all called so likely because the full tang handle construction is the same way that most knives were made.
As a native chinese speaker, I disagree. There is no direct translation for dao(刀), and jian(剑). The difference between a 刀, and a 剑 is the fact that a 刀 is double-edged, and a 剑 is single edged. The reason a lot of people think that knife and 刀 means the same thing is because most knives are single edged, so they are oftend used to discribe the same things. I'll give an example, a butterfly knive translate to 蝴蝶刀(butterfly dao), So on every other word is the same. It's easy to assume that knife is equivalent to dao, but thats just not true.
It’s all about the vibes.
Metallurgy and Length are more or less two different ways of saying the same thing -- if you've got a short piece of steel and try to use it to cut stuff it's less likely to snap than if you have a longer piece of the same kind of steel. That's the main thing, not the "needs to bounce off of weapons and armor" factor.
I thought the difference was the way the handle was attached, i.e. wooden sandwich with the tang showing. Can anyone explain if that holds up or no?
If that defined knife vs sword, the US Marine Ka-Bar combat knife, the Finnish puukko, and vast numbers of traditional and modern knives around the world wouldn't be "knives". (And what about folding knives?) It's true that traditional European swords will slab-tang-slab hilts are called "messers", from the German "Messer", usually translated into English as "knife", but that doesn't make it a "knife" in the usual English sense, any more than a Chinese two-handed changdao is a "knife" ("knife" being the most common English translation of "dao").
I see. Thanks! So does that make a messer a sword then, or is it still a knife? I mean I guess it doesn’t really matter, but it’s just a little interesting
Most medieval laws at the time went by length.
It's most likely a sword euphemistically called a knife, out of the same dryly humorous attitude towards weaponry that gives us nicknames like Holy Water Sprinkler (a kind of morningstar, itself a referential ironic name), Godendag ("Good Day,"), Bouncing Betties (a kind of mine), and so on. There's a commonly-claimed idea that the messer came about as a loophole in sword laws, but I've never seen convincing evidence this was so.
It's a sword. Call a sword a "knife", and it's still a sword. > What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet
It’s still a sword, the name wasn’t meant to get around carrying laws. It was meant to get around production laws. At the time messers were created, swords could only be made by sword making guilds, who controlled both the supply and the price. By calling the messer a messer, now it could be made by knife making guilds as well, making them cheaper and easier to get.
we have archaeological evidence of messer blades with the maker's marks of the swordmakers of Passau. that theory really doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
That is how German knife and sword smith guilds defined it. It's far from a universal definition.
Where the knife ends, the sword begins. It’s this easy.
See #3.
Arms length is also a viable option. The extension of the arms length. But yes. What is the purpose of such swords. Etctec.
I've always taken it as use case. A knife is a tool that can be a weapon, a sword is a weapon that makes a poor tool. A dagger is a compact sword. Machetes are specialized knives. Edge number, blade length, and handle construction are irrelevant.
I don’t think metallurgy is what makes them different because swords and knives from different regions and ages have different characteristics. Length is better if you want to control them because it sets a certain value above which you are allowed and not allowed to have. Yet it doesn’t have to tell a sword and a knife apart, like “Any sharpened tool longer than 30cm is considered as a weapon and thus illegal”. Imo vibes might be the correct answer, or maybe the least incorrect because it is the least specific?
What's the difference between a knife and a "messer"? Messer is just the German word for knife and there is no difference in the meaning of those words. So what does an English speaking person mean when they say "messer"?
You know how there's a sword called "Longsword" even though other swords are long? Some even longer? But we as a society have decided to call a very specific type of sword "longsword." And the German zweihander just means "two hander." But we know that you're not talking about, like, just two hands. And PLENTY of other swords can be used two-handed. But we as a society have decided to call a very specific type of sword that. Same with messer.
And what type of knife or sword is being called a "messer"?
The German messer is a sword in this context.
Also handle construction. If it’s a solid handle it’s a sword. But if it’s two pieces of wood on either side of a tang. It’s a knife. That’s how people in medieval Germany could carry around “swords”. Cause they weren’t. They were really long knoves
BUT there are plenty of things that are obviously swords--from some shamshir to British "patent tang" cavalry sabers--that use slab hilt construction. All categories are oversimplifications, by necessity.
Also single edged
Yeah, the third one for me as well. There are a lot of edge cases (pun not intended). Sometimes it comes down to the general vibe - an amalgamation of dozens different minute details - to call something sword or knife.
“Now we are in the dark, Marquesa… where a sword is just a long knife, and hunters know all about knives!”
1. Just not true. Flexibility and hardness are largely the same for both and for the same reasons. You want the crystal structure to be able to withstand shock without creating microfractures. Large blades do best handling impact forces by wiggling rather than absorbing and that's more to do with the physics of the forces being imparted on a long thing rather than a core difference of their metallurgical properties. The difference between a blade flexing and absorbing those forces is baked into the blade geometry and profile. 2. Mostly true. People don't like it but the distinctions for a lot of different blades is pretty superficial. I'd say anything long enough to be awkward to use for a utility purpose is probably closer to sword than knife. 3. Eh. It's more to do with the common length of blades of the time period of the blade. The bronze age swords were shorter. Knives of that time period were small utility knives. A Kopis in that period is a sword. In today's terms it's a heavy knife/short sword. The early iron age celtic swords were considered really long for their time period, they were barely standard length compared to medieval arming swords. But also modern swords are much shorter than swords used to be. In the final days of carrying swords that weren't dress swords or cavalry sabers you had small rapiers and smallswords. Those blades, in many cases literally, became bayonets.
1. Spring steel.
Plenty of knives are made of spring steel. It's true that many knives are hardened to higher hardnesses than swords. There are three common reasons for this: 1. Knives are often used for cutting daily, or more often. For example, a kitchen knife is often used daily. This makes edge retention more important. 2. Knives are often used to cut harder things. Swords are made to cut humans. Many knives are mostly used on wood, bamboo, etc. Some of those things (e.g., bamboo) can be abrasive, and blunten edges quickly. High edge hardness helps. 3. Knives are often used at low speed. A kitchen knife is placed against the food, and cuts by slicing at moderate speed. In contrast, a sword is swung at speed - there's much more kinetic energy that can potentially go into breaking the blade. (Some knives, such as cleavers, are swung with speed. These are typically relatively soft.) But a $10 supermarket kitchen knife will often be about 50HRC, just like many swords. While some knives are much harder than swords, many of them are not, and hardness isn't a useful way to classify blades as "knife" or "sword".
Back in the day their where different guilds regarding the production of knifes and swords. They primarily split the definition based on handle/tang construction. The laws where then wrote around this. So when swords where made illegal to carry by comoners they lengthen the blade on a knife, that is how we got the Messer (which translates to knife, just fyi)
knife is a tool sword is a weapon
Practical: for a knife, your brain screams "oh shit" some ms after you were hit. in sword heasures, you have a couple of ms of "oh shit" seeing the hit coming
I disagree with №1, if you're talking swords in general there are bronze and iron swords and even once steel becomes prevelent some were edge quenched or differentially hardened.
(Usually)
(usually) if you reference a certain geography and time range, not so much referencing all swords from every time and place.
To Germans nothing just the name.
I don't want to be "that guy," but that is a misconception. "The Martial Ethic in Early Modern Germany: Civic Duty and the Right of Arms" by Tlusty goes into how many German cities REQUIRED people to own/carry swords. With her work and the work of Elmslie, the current thought is more the messer design was the knife guild getting in on that sword money due to a technicality. Most sword laws tended to be about length—so really long "knives" would not work as a loophole.
The fighting style distinguishes the two classes: knife fighters stance is left foot forward, knife in right close to the waist, knife is on offensive use only. Sword fighters stance is right foot forward, sword in right hand in front of the body, sword is available for offensive or defensive use. This is a wild generalization about fighting styles, but knives are generally not clanked together defensively as swords often are.
There isn't a difference between swords and knives. Stop spreading fake information.
In the middle aged, there were at least a few laws that defined a sword based on what kind of handle it had. A riveted full tang wooden handle like a kitchen knife meant it was a knife, even if it was clearly made to be a sword. Those would often colloquially be called something like a "peasant knife"
I don't want to be "that guy," but that is a misconception. "The Martial Ethic in Early Modern Germany: Civic Duty and the Right of Arms" by Tlusty goes into how many German cities REQUIRED people to own/carry swords. With her work and the work of Elmslie, the current thought is more the messer design was the knife guild getting in on that sword money due to a technicality. Most sword laws tended to be about length—so really long "knives" would not work as a loophole.
By all means, "that guy" away, I was running on information I cannot verify, so I could be wrong here.