Weapons
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Three weapons survive in modern competitive fencing: foil , épée , and sabre .

The spadroon and the heavy cavalry -style sabre, both of which saw widespread competitive use in the 19th century , fell into disfavour in the early 20th century with the rising popularity of the lighter and faster weapon used today, based on the Italian duelling sabre. The singlestick featured in the 1904 Olympic Games, but it was already declining in popularity by that time. Bayonet fencing was somewhat slower to decline, with competitions organized by some armed forces as late as the 1940s and 1950s . At one time, staves of various lengths, spears, halberds, axes, daggers, wrestling, shields and flails were all included in Fencing. Today these weapons are the preserve of historical fencing .

While the weapons fencers use differ in size and purpose, their basic construction remains similar across the disciplines. Every weapon has a blade and a hilt . The tip of the blade is generally referred to as the point . The hilt consists of a guard and a grip . The guard (also known as the coquille , or the bellguard ) is a metal shell designed to protect the fingers. The grip is the weapon's actual handle. There are a number of commonly used variants (see grip (sport fencing) ). The more traditional kind tend to terminate with a pommel , a heavy nut intended to act as a counterweight for the blade.