A dagger is a fighting knife typically with a very sharp point and usually one or two sharp edges, typically designed or capable of being used as a cutting or thrusting weapon.State v. Martin, 633 S.W.2d 80 (Mo. 1982): This is the dictionary or popular-use definition of a dagger, which has been used to describe everything from an ice pick to a folding knife with a pointed blade as a 'dagger'. The Missouri Supreme Court used the popular definition of 'dagger' found in Webster's New Universal Dictionary ("a short weapon with a sharp point used for stabbing") to rule that an ordinary pointed knife with a four- to five-inch blade constitutes a 'dagger' under the Missouri criminal code.California Penal Code 12020(a)(24):"dagger" means a knife or other instrument with or without a handguard that is capable of ready use as a stabbing weapon that may inflict great bodily injury or death. The State of California and other jurisdictions have seized upon the popular-use definition of a dagger to classify items ranging from a pointed kitchen knife to a tent stake as a 'dagger' under the law. Daggers have been used throughout human history for close combat confrontations,Burton, Walter E., Knives For Fighting Men, Popular Science, July 1944, Vol. 145 No. 1, p. 150: The dagger is classified as a type of fighting knife, while a combat knife is a knife specifically designed for military use, and is thus only certain types of daggers designed for military use are considered to be combat knives. Thus, an ordinary dagger designed for civilian sale and use is only a fighting knife, while the U.S. Army M3 trench knife is both a combat knife and a fighting knife. and many cultures have used adorned daggers in ritual and ceremonial contexts. The dagger's distinctive shape and historic usage have made it iconic and symbolic. In the modern sense, a dagger is designed for close-proximity combat or self-defense; due to its use in historic weapon assemblages, it has associations with assassination and murder. However, double-edged knives play different roles in different social contexts.
A wide variety of thrusting knives have been described as daggers, including knives that feature only a single cutting edge, such as the European rondel dagger or the Afghan pesh-kabz, or, in some instances, no cutting edge at all, such as the stiletto of the Renaissance. However, in the last hundred years or so, in most contexts, a dagger has specific definable characteristics, including a short blade with a sharply tapered point, a central spine or fuller, and usually two cutting edges sharpened the entire length of the blade, or nearly so.Emerson, Robert L., Legal Medicine and Toxicology, New York: D. Appleton & Co. (1909), p. 80Cassidy, William L., The Complete Book Of Knife Fighting, , (1997), pp. 9–18, 27–36Draper, Frank W., A Text-book of Legal Medicine, Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders & Co. (1905), pp. 341–343Gross, Hans, Criminal Investigation: A Practical Textbook for Magistrates, Police Officers and Lawyers, London: Sweet & Maxwell (1949), p. 185Harding, David, and Cann, Jefferson (eds.), Weapons: An International Encyclopedia from 5000 B.C. to 2000 A.D., The Diagram Visual Group, New York: St. Martin's Press/Macmillan, , (1990), pp. 32–33Goddard, Wayne, The Wonder of Knifemaking, Iola, WI: Krause Publications, , (2011), pp. 50, 131–132 Most daggers also feature a full crossguard to keep the hand from riding forwards onto the sharpened blade edges.The New Werner Twentieth Century edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 6, Akron, OH: The Werner Co. (1907), p. 669Dagger Law & Legal Definition
Daggers are primarily weapons, so knife legislation in many places restricts their manufacture, sale, possession, transport, or use.
History Antiquity
The earliest daggers were made of materials such as flint, ivory or bone in Neolithic times.
Copper daggers appeared first in the early Bronze Age, in the 3rd millennium BC,Sheridan, Alison, A Beaker Period Copper Dagger Blade from the Silees River near Ross Lough, Co. Fermanagh, Ulster Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 56 (1993), pp. 61–62 and copper daggers of Early Minoan III (2400–2000 BC) were recovered at Knossos.C. Michael Hogan, Knossos fieldnotes, Modern Antiquarian (2007)
In ancient Egypt, daggers were usually made of copper or bronze, while royalty had gold weapons. At least since pre-dynastic Egypt,Iorwerth Eiddon Stephen Edwards, Cyril John Gadd, Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond, 1970 () daggers were adorned as ceremonial objects with golden hilts and later even more ornate and varied construction. One early silver dagger was recovered with a midrib design. The 1924 opening of the tomb of Tutankhamun revealed two daggers, one with a gold blade, and one of smelted iron. It is held that mummies of the Eleventh Dynasty were buried with bronze sabres; and there is a bronze dagger of Thut-mes III. (Eighteenth Dynasty), , and bronze armour, swords and daggers of Mene-ptah II. of the (Nineteenth Dynasty) .
Iron production did not begin until 1200 BC, and iron ore was not found in Egypt, making the iron dagger rare, and the context suggests that the iron dagger was valued on a level equal to that of its ceremonial gold counterpart. These facts, and the composition of the dagger had long suggested a meteoritic origin, however, evidence for its meteoritic origin was not entirely conclusive until June 2016 when researchers using x-ray fluorescence spectrometry confirmed similar proportions of metals (Iron, 10% nickel, and 0.6% cobalt) in a meteorite discovered in the area, deposited by an ancient meteor shower."Early View (Online Version of Record published before inclusion in a printed issue)".
One of the earliest objects made of smelted iron is a dagger dating to before 2000 BC, found in a context that suggests it was treated as an ornamental object of great value. Found in a Hattic royal tomb dated about 2500 BC, at Alaca Höyük in northern Anatolia, the dagger has a smelted iron blade and a gold handle.
The artisans and blacksmiths of Iberia in what is now southern Spain and southwestern France produced various iron daggers and swords of high quality from the 5th to the 3rd century BC, in ornamentation and patterns influenced by Greek, Punic (Carthaginian), and Phoenician culture.Wise, Terence, Armies of the Carthaginian Wars, 265–146 BC, London: Osprey Publishing Ltd., , (1982), pp. 20–21 The exceptional purity of Iberian iron and the sophisticated method of forging, which included cold hammering, produced double-edged weapons of excellent quality. One can find technologically advanced designs such as folding knives rusted among the artifacts of many Second Iberian Iron Age cremation burials or in Roman Empire excavations all around Spain and the Mediterranean.De Fontcuberta, Eduardo A., Bandolero Blades, Tactical-Life.com, Tactical Knives (September 2010), retrieved 13 August 2011 Iberian infantrymen carried several types of iron daggers, most of them based on shortened versions of double-edged swords, but the true Iberian dagger had a triangular-shaped blade. Hannibal and his Carthaginian armies later adopted Iberian daggers and swords. The Lusitanii, a pre-Celtic people dominating the lands west of Iberia (most of modern Portugal and Extremadura) successfully held off the Roman Empire for many years with a variety of innovative tactics and light weapons, including iron-bladed short spears and daggers modeled after Iberian patterns.
During the Roman Empire, legionaries were issued a pugio (from the Latin , or "fight"), a double-edged iron thrusting dagger with a blade of . The design and fabrication of the pugio was taken directly from Iberian daggers and short swords; the Romans even adopted the triangular-bladed Iberian dagger, which they called the parazonium. Like the gladius, the pugio was most often used as a thrusting (stabbing weapon). As an extreme close-quarter combat weapon, the pugio was the Roman soldier's last line of defense. The pugio was a convenient utility knife when not in battle.
Middle Ages
The term dagger appears only in the Late Middle Ages, reflecting the fact that while the dagger had been known in antiquity, it had disappeared during the Early Middle Ages, replaced by the hewing knife or seax.Underwood, Richard (1999) Anglo-Saxon Weapons and Warfare Stroud, England: Tempus, p70.Gale, David (1989) The Seax in Weapons and Warfare in Anglo-Saxon England Oxford, England: Oxbow
The dagger reappeared in the 12th century as the "knightly dagger", or more properly, cross-hilt or quillon dagger,Capwell, p. 28 and Thompson, p. 25. The term "quillon" is a modern invention, though it is commonly used and was developed into a common arm and tool for civilian use by the late medieval period.
The earliest known depiction of a cross-hilt dagger is the so-called "Guido relief" inside the Grossmünster of Zürich ().Daniel Gutscher, Das Grossmünster in Zürich (1983), 120–121, 214–215. Some depictions of the fully developed cross-hilt dagger are found in the Morgan Bible (). Many of these cross-hilt daggers resemble miniature swords, with cross guards and pommels very similar in form to swords of the period.See Thompson, p. 10 and Peterson, plate 25, for good examples of this type in the Museum of London Others, however, are not an exact match to known sword designs, having for instance pommel caps, large hollow star shaped pommels on so-called "Burgundian Heraldic daggers" or antenna style cross and pommel, reminiscent of Hallstatt era daggers.See Capwell pp. 28, 122-123, Thompson pp. 24-25, and Peterson plates 26-29 The cross-hilt type persisted well into the RenaissancePeterson plate 46 and Dean p.96, No. 100
The Old French term dague appears to have referred to these weapons in the 13th century, alongside other terms such as poignal and basilard. The Middle English dagger is used from the 1380s.
During this time, the dagger was often employed in the role of a secondary defense weapon in close combat. The knightly dagger evolved into the larger baselard knife in the 14th century. During the 14th century, it became fairly common for knights to fight on foot to strengthen the infantry defensive line. This necessitated more use of daggers. At Agincourt (1415) archers used them to dispatch dismounted knights by thrusting the narrow blades through helmet vents and other apertures. The baselard was considered an intermediate between a short sword and a long dagger, and became popular also as a civilian weapon. Sloane MS. 2593 () records a song satirizing the use of oversized baselard knives as fashion accessories.prenegarde prenegarde, thus bere I myn baselard ed. Pickering 1836. Weapons of this sort called anelace, somewhere between a large dagger and a short sword, were much in use in 14th century England as civilians' accoutrements, worn "suspended by a ring from the girdle".
In the Late Middle Ages, knives with blade designs that emphasized thrusting attacks, such as the stiletto, became increasingly popular, and some thrusting knives commonly referred to as 'daggers' ceased to have a cutting edge. This was a response to the deployment of heavy armour, such as maille and plate armour, where cutting attacks were ineffective and focus was on thrusts with narrow blades to punch through mail or aim at armour plate intersections (or the eye slits of the helmet visor). The shape of their hilt sometimes classes these late medieval thrusting weapons as either roundel, bollock or ear daggers. The term dagger is coined in this time, as are the Early Modern German equivalents dolch (tolch) and degen (tegen). In the German school of fencing, Johannes Liechtenauer (Ms. 3227a) and his successors (specifically Andres Lignizer in Cod. 44 A 8) taught fighting with the dagger.