Sword

How to spell sword

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce sword

What does sword mean?

1. nounA weapon with a long metal blade and a handle, used for cutting or thrusting.

Sword in a sentence

• The museum displayed a medieval sword behind reinforced glass.

• The knight drew his sword before the duel began.

Where does sword come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word comes straight from the Old English sweord, which named a long-bladed weapon used for cutting and thrusting, and it has cousins all across the Germanic family, including Old Norse sverd, Old High German swert, and modern German Schwert. The deeper root is reconstructed as a Proto-Germanic form swerdam, often linked to an idea of stinging or wounding, which fits a weapon meant to pierce. The most interesting thing about the spelling is the 'w': in early English the word really was pronounced with a 'sw' sound, but over the centuries the 'w' fell silent before the rounded vowel, leaving a letter on the page that the voice no longer says. That silent 'w' is exactly the trap, since the word sounds like 'sord' yet must be written with the buried w after the s. English has kept that older spelling unchanged for more than a thousand years, which is why the modern form looks so much odder than it sounds.

How the word is built

• sword (from Old English sweord: a bladed weapon); a single root word with the now-silent 'w' preserved from its older pronunciation