Lotsa folks confuse the word "foil" with the word "sword.'"

Check out THIS photo.

The one on the left is an older French foil. You can't really see the hand-guard at this angle, but I've seen a few of these things and the guard had a sort of figure 8 shape, similar to the French smallsword, for which it was the practice weapon. The point is blunted ("foiled"—that's where the word comes from) and it looks a bit like a nail head. Modern fencers often wrap a strip of medical adhesive tape about six inches long and a quarter of an inch wide around this "nail head" to pad it a bit (at least we did 50 years ago). I'm sure fencers back in the late 1700s did something similar. At least they word padded jackets, or "plastrons" (a padded chest protector) to protect themselves. And the blade of the foil is fairly flexible, but not so flexible as to be "whippy." When a touch is made, the blade bends.

On the right is the hilt of a French smallsword, the kind gentlemen wore around the time of the French Revolution, and for decades before and after. The blade was tempered, but it was much stiffer than a foil blade, and of course, the point was sharp. The edges, however, were not. When you see a couple of movie actors going at it with smallswords as if they are trying to cut or slash each other, this is pure Hollywood hokum.

Older French foils. All modern French foils have cup-shaped guards like the one on the left.

Italian foil. There wasn't really an Italian smallsword. The Italian equivalent during the era was more like the cup-hilted rapier from a previous era, but not quite as hefty.

French and Italian épées. ("épée" is a popular word in crossword puzzles. Clue: "fencing sword"). The épée came into existence as a more modern replacement for the smallsword and the only difference between a dueling épée and a fencing épée is that the first has a sharp point and the second has a blunt point. In sport fencing, the épée was the first to be hooked up with electrical scoring equipment. The épée is a strictly point weapon. No cutting edge.

Saber. In contrast to the foil and the épée, the saber has a "knucklebow" on the guard (the part of the guard that curves back and attaches to the back of the hilt. Modern fencing sabers are much lighter than cavalry sabers, only a few ounces heavier that a foil. Although blunt as all these "weapons" are, it is assumed that the point is sharp, and a sharp edge runs the full length of the front of the blade and it third of the back of the blade nearest the point.

16th century rapier.

Cup-hilted rapier with a "main gauche" (left-hand) dagger.

Tyrone Power (Diego Vega, aka "Zorro") skewers Basil Rathbone (Captain Esteban Pasquale) in the 1940 movie The Mark of Zorro. They are both armed with modern fencing sabers (actually blunt, of course, despite special effects in this photo) that you can purchase from a fencing equipment catalog currently. Touché!

Don Firth