Stiletto
The Italian thrusting-only dagger
The stiletto is a thrust-only dagger developed in 15th-century Italy, with a thin, rigid blade of triangular or square (sometimes round) cross-section: it has no cutting edge at all and attacks only with its needle point. Some 15โ30 cm long, the slender, stiff, awl-like blade was specialized to drive precisely into the gaps of plate armor โ the armpit, the joints, the eye-slit of a helm โ or between the rings of mail. Small and hard, easy to hide under clothing, it served both as a battlefield armor-piercing dagger and as a weapon of self-defense and assassination. A narrow, deep stab wound looks small but is deadly, which fixed its image as 'the stealthy assassin's blade' and later influenced military fighting-knife designs in many countries.