Kilij
With a name derived from a Turkic root word that means “to kill”, and that appropriately sounds like its intended task even in English, the single-edged kilij was the traditional saber of the Turks and related cultures. It is a member of the family of curved swords that include the South Asian tulwar, the Afghan pulwar, and the Persian shamshir, all tracing their origins to the Turkic nomads of the Central Asian Steppe, who used them since as far back as the nomadic Xiongnu empire of the 3rd century BC.
What set the kilij apart from other members of the Turkic curved sword family was a design that added additional metal to the final foot or so of the blade, giving it more mass and weight toward the front. The additional weight near the tip shifted the kilij’s center of gravity towards the front edge, giving the blade greater momentum, and thus hacking and chopping power, at the point of likely impact, and made the kilij the best cutting sword in history. Better even than the katana at chopping things, as can be seen on various YouTube videos, including one from a Deadliest Warrior episode showing a kilij cutting the carcass of a full-grown hog in half with one swing.
Turkic curved swords were used and influenced blade designs in all lands conquered or influenced by Turkic peoples. It was a mean sounding and mean-looking sword that connoted images of mean people using them to do mean things. The ranks of famous kilij users include the Transylvanian ruler Vlad III, AKA Vlad the Impaler, who gave rise to the legend of Dracula. It was not a sword that inspired warm and fuzzy feelings.
The devastating cutting power of the kilij came at a price. It was an excellent sword for use from horseback to deliver downward strokes on infantry and was optimized for power and effective cutting. However, outside the type of combat for which it was designed, it was not an agile sword, which made it a poor weapon for dueling, especially against opponents armed with lighter swords. Faced with such opponents, an unhorsed kilij wielder would be in serious trouble if they were competent.