Quote:
Originally Posted by tbeard1999
I'd always heard it as "cold steel" and usually as a euphemism for a bayonet -
"Rangers of Connaught! It is not my intention to expend any powder this evening. We'll do this business with Cold Steel." -- General Sir Thomas Picton, 6 April 1812 to the 88th Foot before the assault on Badajoz.
"I beg leave to remind the Cavalry Board that very few people have ever been killed with the bayonet or sabre, but the fear of having their guts explored with Cold Steel in the hands of battle maddened men has won many a fight." -Gen. George Patton
And of course, the Poet Laureate of the British Empire:
Gold is for the mistress - silver for the maid
Copper for the craftsman cunning in his trade.
"Good!" said the Baron, sitting in his hall
But steel - cold steel is master of them all.
I think that the adjective "cold" connotes a lack of pity and harshness - appropriate for bayonets.
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That's all very well for a Napoleonic to post-Napoleonic world, where cold steel confronts hot lead; but in medieval terminology there was a more specific meaning to it, and it
was "cold iron" then. According to several medieval sources, "cold iron" was a sovereign counter to some forms of witchcraft and Magick, and certain monsters of legend...
Now the question becomes; "why is that?"