Word.ws English Dictionary

mortuary sword

mortuary sword noun: a (typically two-edged) sword with a straight blade and a half-basket hilt, used in Britain especially during the English Civil War.

mortuary sword: a (typically two-edged) sword with a straight blade and a half-basket hilt, used in Britain...
Image: G.F. Laking, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

mortuary sword (plural mortuary swords)

  1. A (typically two-edged) sword with a straight blade and a half-basket hilt, used in Britain especially during the English Civil War.

Forms of mortuary sword

pluralmortuary swords

Origin of mortuary sword

In popular belief, so named because the hilts sometimes depict a face, which is commonly believed to be that of King Charles I, executed in 1649; in fact, swords of this type with that face were used by both sides of the conflict even before Charles was killed. An alternative explanation for the name is that many such swords were donated to churches when their wielders died, and used in funerary displays.

Questions about mortuary sword

What does mortuary sword mean?
Mortuary sword means a (typically two-edged) sword with a straight blade and a half-basket hilt, used in Britain especially during the English Civil War.
What part of speech is mortuary sword?
Mortuary sword is a noun.
What is the plural of mortuary sword?
The plural of mortuary sword is mortuary swords.

Words near mortuary sword in the dictionary

  1. mortuary chapel
  2. mortuary chapels
  3. mortuary pole
  4. mortuary poles
  5. mortuary science
  6. mortuary sword
  7. mortuary swords
  8. mortuus equus phobia
  9. mortuusequusphobia
  10. Morty
  11. Moru

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mortuary sword (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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