Duel Intentions

To fence, you must don a particular uniform: a suite of clothes, actions and words collated from European traditions hundreds of years old. Originally, the art of swordsmanship was formally taught in order to allow men to duel whenever honor needed satisfying—though these face-offs usually ended when one side drew blood, rather than ending in death.

Over time, fencing was taught more for sport than combat and became fashionable in an age of uncertainty and revolutions—American, Industrial and French—as something that spoke of an earlier, prouder time. The history and rituals of fencing have quietly resonated through the centuries.

To start, you’ve almost certainly sparred with some fencing lingo at some point: The sport has gifted English some particularly sparkling words such as riposte, feint, parry, foible and lunge. The uniform hasn’t changed much—the traditional garb was white to reveal blows from red-tipped swords, though hits are now often recorded electronically—but the wire masks were only introduced in the 18th century by French fencing masters.