bayonet: [17] Bayonet comes from French bayonette, an early spelling of what is now baïonette. The French term is traditionally derived from Bayonne, the name of a town and port on the southwest coast of France, near Biarritz, where bayonets were supposedly first used by Basques of the area, in the 17th century. But this etymology is not universally accepted, and some have noted the resemblance to Old French bayon ‘crossbow bolt’.
