Editing Sabre (section)

==Etymology==
The English ''sabre'' is recorded from the 1670s, as a direct loan from French, where ''sabre'' is an alteration of ''sable'', which was in turn loaned from German ''Säbel'', ''Sabel'' in the 1630s. The German word is on record from the 15th century, loaned from Polish ''szabla'', which was itself adopted from Hungarian ''szabla'' (14th century, later ''szablya'').<ref>{{Citation |last=Held |first=Robert [Hrsg |title=Polish sabres: their origins and evolution |date=2021 |url=http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/artdok/id/eprint/7440 |access-date=2023-10-03 |publisher=Heidelberg University Library |doi=10.11588/artdok.00007440}}</ref>
The spread of the Hungarian word to neighboring European languages took place in the context of the [[Ottoman wars in Europe]] of the 15th to 17th centuries. The spelling ''saber'' became common in [[Comparison of American and British English|American English]] in the second half of the 19th century.<ref>e.g.  Report on the Military Academy at West Point, United States Congressional serial set, Volume 1089, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1861, [https://books.google.com/books?id=iGtHAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA218  p. 218].</ref>

The origin of the Hungarian word is unclear. It may itself be a loan from South Slavic ([[Serbo-Croatian]] ''[[wiktionary:sablja|sablja]]'', Common Slavic ''[[:wikt:Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/sablja|*sabľa]]''), which would ultimately derive from a [[Turkic languages|Turkic]] source.<ref>There are some alternative suggestions, deriving the term from a natively Slavic word; e.g.  Brückner (''Słownik etymologiczny języka polskiego''. 1927) adduced Slavi ''sabl'' "rooster"  and Menges (''The Oriental elements in the vocabulary of the oldest Russian epos'', 1951) attempted to connect the Arabic ''[[Arab sword|saif]]''.</ref> In a more recent suggestion, the Hungarian word may ultimately derive from a [[Tungusic languages|Tungusic]] source, via [[Kipchak languages|Kipchak Turkic]]  ''selebe'', with later metathesis (of ''l-b'' to ''b-l'') and apocope changed to ''*seble'', which would have changed its vocalisation in Hungarian to the recorded ''sabla'', perhaps under the influence of the Hungarian word ''szab-'' "to crop; cut (into shape)".<ref>Possible Tungusic cognates include [[Manchu language|Manchu]] ''seleme'' "dagger", [[Evenki language|Evenk]] ''sälämä'' "sword", argued to be a natively Tungusic formation of ''sele'' "iron" plus a denominal suffix ''-me'' by Stachowski (2004).
Marek Stachowski, "The Origin of the European Word for Sabre", ''Studia Etymologica Cracoviensia'' 9 (2004), p. 135, citing V. Rybatzki, ''Studia Etymologica Cracoviensia 7'' (2002), p. 115), Menges, ''Ural-altaische Jahrbücher. Neue Folge 3'' (1983), p. 125.</ref>