An archaic spelling variant of a cutlass or curved sword, particularly one with a shortened blade.
A confused or variant spelling combining curtal (short) with ax/axe, likely influenced by cutlass (from French coutelas). This represents the messiness of medieval English orthography when borrowing maritime weaponry terms.
This word shows how wildly inconsistent spelling was in the 1600s—different writers couldn't agree whether they were writing 'curtalax,' 'cutlass,' or 'courtlax,' and all three versions appeared in published texts as if they were different weapons!
Complete word intelligence in one call. Free tier — 50 lookups/day.