Swashbuckling pirates

[sigma]

What is swashbuckling ?

[fredpuli47]

Banging your shield with your sword, intending thereby to intimidate your enemy. Riot police sometimes do something similar, in hitting their riot shields with their batons as they advance on the crowd.

The 'swash' part is the verb 'to swash' meaning to 'make a noise as of swords clashing or of a sword beating on a shield' [OED]. A buckler was a small round shield.

A swashbuckler is a swaggering bully or ruffian, or a noisy boaster ,and swashbuckling is what he does:he makes a lot of noise and show, just as a warrior does when he bashes his shield. Strictly swashbuckle and swashbuckling are the wrong way round. The man is swashing his buckle not buckling his swash !

[fredpuli47]

I'll rephrase that : Strictly, it's the verb, swashbuckling, that seems wrong, not the noun, swashbuckler. Buckling is not what he's doing. And buckler sounds like a noun for someone who buckles but, of course, this 'buckler' is a thing which is swashed..

[heathfield]

So the words should really be (n) ''bucklerswasher'' and (v) ''bucklerswashing''. Haven't got the same ring, somehow! :-)