Forms: 6 coutelace, 7 coutelas, cuttelas, cuttleass, 8 cutlace, 7– cutlass. Also corruptly β. 7 cutleax, cuttleaxe, cotellax; γ. 8– cutlash. [a. F. coutelas, augm. of couteau (coutel) knife; cognate with It. coltellaccio: Lat. type *cultellāceum. The original coutel-as, coutel-ace, has undergone many perversions in English under the influence of popular etymology, which has transformed the first part into cuttle, curtal, curtle, curt, cut, and the second into ax, axe. A later change has made cutlass into cut-lash. The forms cuttle-ax and cut-lash are included here; see CURTELACE, CURTAL-AX, CURT-AXE, in their alphabetical places.]
A short sword with a flat wide slightly curved blade, adapted more for cutting than for thrusting; now esp. the sword with which sailors are armed.
α. 1594. Kyd, Cornelia, I. in Hazl., Dodsley, V. 189. Arm’d with his blood-besmeared keen coute-lace.
1603. Knolles, Hist. Turks (1621), 1333. A Cuttelas verie curiously wrought, and inricht with stone.
1633. T. James, Voy., 67. The boyes with Cuttleasses, must cut boughes.
1678. trans. Gaya’s Arms War, 32. A kind of Cutlass, which they called Cinacis, and in English Cimeter.
1719. De Foe, Crusoe (1840), I. xvii. 300. A great cutlass (as the seamen call it) or sword.
1825. Waterton, Wand. S. Amer., I. i. 92. With a cutlass to sever the small bush-ropes.
1868. Regul. & Ord. Army, ¶ 1299. The sailors armed with cutlasses are to proceed to the hatchways.
β. [1598. Florio, Coltellaccio, a curtelax or chopping knife.] Ibid. (1611), A cutleax, a hanger. Also a chopping knife, a great knife.
1630. J. Taylor (Water P.), Langh & be fat, Wks. II. 79/1. The bloudy cutthroat cuttleaxe of swaggering Mars.
1647. N. Bacon, Disc. Govt. Eng., I. lxxi. (1739), 194. Either a Cotellax, or such-like Weapon.
γ. 1704. Collect. Voy. (Church.), III. 779/1. Men arm’d with Cutlashes.
1725. Pope, Odyss., XIV. 87. Of two, his cutlash launch’d the spouting blood.
1757. Smollett, Reprisals, II. viii. A good cutlash in my hand.
1867. Smyth, Sailor’s Word-bk., Cutlas … the small-handed swords supplied to the navy, the cutlash of Jack.
2. Comb., cutlass-blade, etc.; cutlass-proof adj.; cutlass-fish, a name of a species of fish, the Silvery hair-tail, so called from its shape.
1711. E. Ward, Quix., I. 26. That he conceiv’d ’twas Cutlace proof.
1827. O. W. Roberts, Centr. Amer., 300. The Indians constantly require … moscheates, or cutlass blades.
Hence Cutlass v. nonce-wd., to hew with a cutlass; Cutlassed ppl. a., furnished with cutlasses.
1890. Lafcadio Hearn, in Harper’s Mag., Feb., 413/1. He will cutlass his way through forest to the summit of peaks to find particular herbs and cabbage-palm for the market.
1839. Standard, 11 July, 1/6. The nucleus of a cutlassed gendarmerie.
