Is it possible to meaningfully distinguish between hangers and cutlasses from the 17th century? The differences between the two types of sword seem to be slight, if any. The only possible difference that I observe is that early cutlasses usually have a scallop shell guard, whereas hangers do not necessarily have this style of guard. However, it is unclear that this is even a meaningful distinction, as I am sure there are numerous examples of swords that do not conform to it.

So, can a distinction be made, if any?

The short answer is no and even the word "cutlass" originated on dry land. The longer answer would involve specific patterns adopted by or marketed to particular users which might have some relevancy from an academic or even living history perspective but would have little or no bearing on the development of weaponry or martial arts.The differentiation between two randomly selected cutlass patterns at any given time could be as great or greater than the differentiation between a randomly selected cutlass pattern and randomly selected hanger pattern.

First you'll have to define your terms. What exactly do you mean by "cutlass" and "hanger" and how do the two differ in your view? Because as far as I can tell they're synonymous for all practical intents and purposes.

I cannot provide a definition for these swords. If the definition is meant to make distinctions between them, I'd be even harder pressed. It sounds like my intuition was right: there is no distinction that can be made.

I always thought that the English word 'cutlass' was/is the anglicized version of the Dutch 'korte las'; with 'korte' meaning 'short' and where a 'las' was the Dutch 17th century word for 'sabre''. So, 'korte las' would be literally translated as 'short sabre'.

I always assumed it to be true simply because it made sense to me (with a lot of nautical terminology in the English language being anglicized versions of Dutch words). I've, however, never verified of tried to check this piece of 'knowledge'.

Would be interesting to hear if my assumption has been wrong all those years.

JB

... Double post ........

Well, I've always assumed a "hanger" is simply a sword that hangs at your side, rather than a foreign loan word.

PS. It's sometimes been suggested the term may have derived from khanjar, due to the slight similarity of the words, but to my knowledge there's no actual evidence of any sort to back up that notion, and since the English term rather predates the popularity of Asian cultural influences in Britain I would think it quite farfetched, at best.

A friend of mine described it to me as 'A hanger is a gentleman's cutlass'.