small-sword

A beautifully chiseled French 18th-century small-sword with flowers and foliage framing pastoral scenes with costumed couples, cows, sheep and dogs is expected to fetch £8,000-£10,000.

Storied Steel: Sales of Historic Arms, Armor and Medals 2009

He learned the use of the small-sword while in Edinburgh, and took lessons from a performer at the theatre, with the purpose of refining his mode of speaking.

The Surgeon's Daughter 2008

Voltaire, who had at all events that substitute for true physical courage which springs up in an intensely irritable and susceptible temperament, forthwith applied himself to practise with the small-sword.

Voltaire 2007

I am ready to fight one, two, three, or twenty of them, at broad-sword, small-sword, single-stick, with fists if you please.

Burlesques 2006

He was the only man I ever met who could master me with the small-sword; with which he would pink me four times to my three.

The Memoires of Barry Lyndon 2006

I put myself in a posture of defence, and aware of the superiority of my weapon, a rapier or small-sword, was little afraid of the issue of the contest.

Rob Roy 2005

If any one doubts that boxing and small-sword will do more to give elasticity and tone to the nervous system than lifting kegs of nails, then I will give him over to the heavy-lifters.

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 58, August, 1862 Various

Here and there, however, some opulent tenant has modernized his rooms; but the structures, inside and out, remain for the most part not materially changed from the later Georgian era of their erection, -- a time when every gentleman sported a small-sword and ladies wore hoops and patches.

Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 Various

Sometimes they study manner as they would the small-sword exercise, and exploit it-with equal fervor.

Manners and Social Usages Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood

-- His touches of satire and irony are as light as the hits of an accomplished master of the small-sword; mere hits, but significant of deep thrusts, at the scandals, abuses, and oppressions of the age.

English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History Designed as a Manual of Instruction Henry Coppee