estramacon

plural estramacons

1. A straight, heavy sword with two edges, used in the 16th and 17th centuries.

   Then to the pair, who speechless stood, he stretch'd A table-spread, bade each to hold an end, And with clear voice: "As we, the Church's arm, With this estramacon do smite in twain The texture of this fabric" (here he flash'd The blade between the two, cleaving the cloth), […]

   1881, George Washington Wright Houghton, The Legend of St. Olaf's Kirk, page 41

2. A downward cutting blow with the edge of a sword or fencing weapon.

   Dost think I could ride a horse and learn the tricks of Carricade and sly passata, Stramazon and bold stoccata, Maudritta to embrocata.

   1918, Adventure - Volume 17, Part 1, page 8

   4 more examples

   I tripped a hasty morrice[…]upon the dining table, now offering my sword [to the Duke of Buckingham], now recovering it, I made a blow at his nose—a sort of estramaçon—the dexterity of which consists in coming mighty near to the object you seem to aim at, yet not attaining it.

   1822, [Walter Scott], chapter XXXIV, in Peveril of the Peak. […], volume III, Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co., →OCLC, page 281

   In general we know that early armor of this type was often tried out by the chopping cut (estramaçon) of a sword, and that a similar test was used throughout Europe down to the seventeenth century.

   1920, Bashford Dean, Helmets and Body Armor in Modern Warfare, page 40

   Colombino used his left arm as a buckler, and before the ruffian could disentangle his blade from the Captain's cloak, a swift estramacon came to sever the sinews of his sword-arm.

   1935, Rafael Sabatini, Chivalry

   In speaking of head-pieces he states, on the same page, that the heavier kinds were proved with musket-shot, but the light varieties were only tested with "estramaçon" or sword-cut; and he adds that for armour to be good it must be beaten and worked cold and not hot.

   2008, Charles John Ffoulkes, The Armourer and His Craft, page 70

   Synonyms: stramazoun