Pugio

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A historical weapon resembling a small dagger, primarily utilized in close combat by Roman soldiers
2. An ancient Roman short weapon, typically used for personal defense or in battle situations
3. A compact stabbing weapon used by Roman troops during hand-to-hand fighting

Etymology: The Roman legionary's dagger, the pugio, was a short, broad-bladed weapon carried on the belt and used at close quarters, and it survives in English largely as a technical term for that military object. The English word was borrowed directly from the Latin "pugiō," the same noun that Roman writers used for this blade, so the English term has kept the original sense and form without the centuries of semantic drift that many other borrowings underwent. Its Latin ancestor is traceable to the Latin word for a stabbing blade, and the idea of a dagger has stayed attached to the word from antiquity to the modern dictionary. Historians and archaeologists have adopted the Latin name so that the weapon can be distinguished from the gladius, the longer sword that Roman infantry also carried.