stramazone

“Thus was it that for the first time I made the acquaintance -- an acquaintance held by few men in those days -- of those marvellous guards of Marozzo's devising; Falcone showed me the difference between the mandritto and the roverso, the false edge and the true, the stramazone and the tondo; and he left me spellbound by that marvellous guard appropriately called by Marozzo the iron girdle -- a low guard on the level of the waist, which on the very parry gives an opening for the point, so that in one movement you may ward and strike.”

The Strolling Saint; being the confessions of the high and mighty Agostino D'Anguissola, tyrant of Mondolfo and Lord of Carmina in the state of Piacenza