Dagger

Dagger (pronounced dag-er)

(1) A short, double-edged weapon with a pointed blade and a handle, used historically for personal protection in close combat (although some were weighted for throwing), but since the development of side-arms, increasing only for ceremonial purposes (many produced without sharpened edges).

(2) In typography a mark (†) used to indicate a cross reference, especially a footnote (also called obelisk).  The double dagger (‡) is also used.

(3) In sport and military strategy, a offence which thrusts deep into opposition territory on a short front.

(4) In glaciology, the long, conical ice-formations formed from drops of water (al la the stalactites in caves).

(5) In the slang of clinical medicine, anything that causes pain like a stabbing injury (typically, some sort of barb)

(6) In basketball & American football, a point scored near the end of the game (clutch time) to take or increase the scorer's team lead.

(7) In nautical architecture, as daggerboard, a retractable centre-board that slides out to act as a keel; a timber placed diagonally in a ship's frame.

(8) To stab with a dagger or similar bladed weapon (archaic).

(9) In typography, to mark with a dagger (obelisk).

1380s: From the Middle English daggere, daggare & dagard, probably an adaptation from the thirteenth century Old French dague (dagger), from the Old Provençal or Italian daga of obscure origin but related to the Occitan, Italian & Spanish daga, the Dutch dagge, the German Degen, the Middle Low German dagge (knife's point), the Old Norse daggarðr, the Danish daggert, the Faroese daggari, the Welsh dager & dagr, the Breton dac and the Albanian thikë (a knife, dagger) & thek (to stab, to pierce with a sharp object).  Etymologists have speculated on the source of dagger, some suggesting a Celtic origin.  Others prefer the unattested Vulgar Latin daca & dacian (knife) (the name from the Roman province), from the Classical Latin adjective dācus while an entry in an eighteenth century French dictionary held the French dague was from the German dagge & dagen (although not attested until much later).  More speculatively still is the notion of some link with the Old Armenian դակու (daku) (adze, axe), an alternative to which is some connection with the primitive Indo-European dāg-u-, suggesting something cognate with the Ancient Greek θήγω (thḗgō) (to sharpen, whet).  Dagger is a noun & verb, daggering is a noun & verb, daggerman & daggerpoint are nouns, daggerlike is an adjective and daggered is a verb; the noun plural is daggers.

Daggers drawn: Lindsay Lohan and Vanessa Lachey (née Minnillo, b 1980), staged shot, June, 2007.

The association of the dagger with knightly weaponry can be traced back to French writings in the twelfth century while the other Middle Latin forms included daga, dagga, dagha, dagger, daggerius, daggerium, dagarium, dagarius & diga (the words with the -r- being late fourteenth century adoptions of the English word.  The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) lists an English verb dag (to stab) from which dagger as a verb could be derived but the verb is attested only from the turn of the fifteenth century.  Long used as a weapon of personal protection, skilled sixteenth & seventeenth century swordsmen would use one in their other (usually left) hand to parry thrusts from the opponent's rapier.  It was a high-risk technique.  The use in texts as a reference mark (also called the obelisk) dates from 1706.  The wonderfully named “bollock dagger” was a dagger with a distinctively shaped shaft having two oval swellings at the guard resembling the male testes.  The polite term was “kidney dagger”.  An “ear dagger” was used in the late medieval period and gained the name from its distinctive, ear-shaped pommel.  In slang, to be “stabbed with a Bridport dagger” was to be executed by hanging, the origin of that being the district of Bridport in Dorset being a major producer of the hemp fibre used in the production of the ropes used by hangmen.  In idiomatic use, to “look daggers at” is to stare at someone angrily or threateningly, something one would do if “at daggers drawn” (in a state of open hostility) with them.

Lindsay Lohan in stiletto heels, February 2009.  Whether much would have changed in the fashion business if the style of heel had come to be known as "dagger" instead of "stiletto" is unlikely.

Other names for the short bladed weapon included stiletto & poniard.  Stiletto was from the Italian stiletto; doublet of stylet, the construct being stil(o) (dagger or needle (from the Latin stilus (stake, pens))) + -etto (-ette).  From the Latin stilus came also stelo, an inherited doublet.  Stilus was from the primitive Indo-European (s)teyg- (related to instīgō & instigare) and was cognate with the Ancient Greek στίζω (stízō) (to mark with a pointed instrument) and the Proto-Germanic stikaną (to stick, to stab).  Despite the similarity, there’s no relationship with the Ancient Greek στῦλος (stûlos) (a pillar).  The -etto suffix was from the Late Latin -ittum, accusative singular of –ittus and was an alternative suffix used to form melioratives, diminutives and hypocoristics.  The noun plural is either stilettos or stilettoes and stilettolike (appearing also as stiletto-like) is an adjective.  A technical adoption in law-enforcement and judicial reports were the verb-forms stilettoed & stilettoing, referring to a stabbing or killing with a stiletto-like blade.  It was a popular description used by police when documenting the stabbing by wives of husbands or boyfriends with scissors or kitchen knives; use faded in the early twentieth century.  The use of “stiletto heel” to describe the elegant, narrow high heel in women's shoes dates from as recently as 1953.  Poniard (a dagger or other short, stabbing weapon) dates from the 1580s and was from the early sixteenth century French poinard, from the Old French poignal (dagger (literally “anything grasped with the fist”)), from poing (fist), from the Latin pungus (a fist (a pugio being “a dagger”)), from a suffixed form of the primitive Indo-European root peuk- (to prick).  It’s thought it was probably altered in French by association with poindre (to stab).  It was used a verb from the turn of the seventeenth century in the sense of “to stab with or as if with a poniard”.

Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945, Hitler's designated successor & Reichsmarschall 1940-1945) in Luftwaffe Field Marshal’s uniform with baton and sword (1938, left) and in Luftwaffe General’s uniform with ceremonial dagger (right).  The baton would be replaced with an even more extravagant, jewel-encrusted creation when in 1940 he was appointed Reichsmarschall and it's now on display in the US Army's West Point Museum at Highland Falls, New York.  Convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity, Göring was hanged in 1946. 

The dagger shown (right) is a standard 1935 issue for Luftwaffe officers.  Updated in 1937 and fashioned always with a 260 mm (10¼ inch) blade, the pommel and crossguard were aluminum, bearing the swastika (occasionally finished in anodized gold) on the pommel face with a Luftwaffe flighted eagle and swastika on the crossguard.  The grips were celluloid over a word base and in various production runs they were finished in colors ranging from pure white to a deep orange.  The scabbards were all in anodized grayish blue steel with a striped decoration on the body face with an oak leaf pattern on the face of the drag.  Worn suspended from straps bearing twin silver stripes on a dark grayish blue background with square buckles, it featured a short aluminum cord knot.  In an example of the expanding list of recipients entitled to wear a dagger, after 1940, authorization was extended to non-commissioned officers though without the portepee (the sword-knot which denoted an officer’s right to bear a sword).  The sword word by Göring (left) was a bespoke one-off manufactured by the Eickhorm company to mark his wedding on 10 April 1935.  The pommel was engraved with a facsimile of the Pour Le Merite (the “Blue Max”) Göring was awarded during his service as a pilot with the Jagdgeschwader 1 (better remembered as Manfred von Richthofen’s Flying Circus).

Germans have long adored uniforms and especially prized are the accessories, among the most distinctive of which are ceremonial daggers.  During the Third Reich, a period in which many institutions of state were increasingly re-ordered along military lines, the issuing of ceremonial daggers was at its most widespread and in addition to the expected recipients in the army, navy & air force, the SS, the SA, the Hitler Youth, the diplomatic service and the police, they were also part of the uniforms of organizations such as the fire department, the postal & telegraph service, the forest service, the labor service, the customs service the railway & waterways protective service and the miners association.  While it’s true that in Germany daggers had in the past been issued even to civilians, under the Nazis the scale and scope proliferated.

Masonic daggers.

Among their many mysterious rituals, the Freemasons also have their own lines of daggers which they claim are purely “ceremonial” but because all that they do is so shrouded in secrecy, the true nature of their purpose isn’t known.  It is however believed that the styles of daggers conferred reflect the grades and offices which evolved from the medieval craft guilds and presumably, the more exalted one’s place in the Masonic hierarchy, the more elaborate the dagger to which one is entitled.  Top of the pile in a Masonic Lodge is the Worshipful Master, other intriguing titles including Senior Warden, Junior Warden, Chaplain, Senior Deacon, Junior Deacon, Steward, Tyler, Mentor and Almoner.  Whether all get their own daggers or some share with others are among the many mysteries of Freemasonry.  Of the even more opaque Secret Society of the Les Clefs d’Or, nothing is known about whether their rituals include the use of daggers, ceremonial or otherwise.