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A walking stick (also known as a walking cane, cane, walking staff, or staff) is a device used primarily to aid walking, provide postural stability or support, or assist in maintaining a good posture. Some designs also serve as a fashion accessory, or are used for self-defense.
Walking sticks come in many shapes and sizes and some have become collector's items. People with disabilities may use some kinds of walking sticks as a crutch, but a walking cane is not designed for full weight support but used to help with balance. The walking stick has also historically been known to be used as a self-defense weapon, and may conceal a sword or knife.
Hikers use walking sticks, also known as trekking poles, pilgrim's staffs, hiking poles, or hiking sticks, for a wide variety of purposes: as a support when going uphill or as a brake when going downhill; as a balance point when crossing streams, swamps, or other rough terrain; to feel for obstacles in the path; to test mud and water for depth; to enhance the cadence of striding, and as a defence against animals. An alpenstock, from its origins in mountaineering in the Alps, is equipped with a steel point and may carry a hook or ice axe on top. More ornate sticks may be adorned with small trinkets or medallions depicting visited territory. Wooden walking-sticks are used for outdoor sports, healthy upper-body exercise, and even club, department, and family memorials. They can be individually handcrafted from a number of woods and may be personalised with wood carving or metal engraving plaques.
A collector of walking sticks is termed a rabologist. [1]
Around the 17th or 18th century, a walking stick became an essential part of the European gentleman's wardrobe. The fashion may have originated with Louis XIV, who favored a walking stick, possibly because he wore high heels. [2] As a curator of the Detroit Institute of Arts wrote about elaborate walking sticks in their collection:
There was almost no limit to the sums which people were then willing to spend upon them. Louis XIV had a stick whose eagle knob was set with twenty-four diamonds. The Regent of France, one of the outstanding rakes of the century, had a huge and famous diamond called "the Regent" set as the head of a walking stick. People of fashion spent as much as forty thousand francs a year on walking sticks. Voltaire, who considered that he lived a life free from fashionable nonsense, owned eighty sticks. Rousseau, a poor man and the apostle of the simple life, owned forty. Count Brühl, creator of the famous Brühl Terrace at Dresden, owned three hundred canes, each with a snuff-box to match, one for each of his three hundred suits. [2]
The fashion spread across the Atlantic to America. Benjamin Franklin had received as a gift a gold-headed walking stick from a French lady admirer when he was ambassador to France. Franklin wrote a codicil to his Will in 1789 bequeathing it to George Washington. It is now in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution. [3]
For use as a walking aid, it is usually recommended that the length of the stick should be such that the top of the handle reaches the wrist joint when standing up with arms hanging, wearing the footwear to be used with the stick. [4]
Sticks are rated according to the weight they can bear; this is not just a matter of the weight of the user, but depends upon whether the stick is used for light balance and support, or with a great deal of weight placed on the stick. Canes made of carbon fiber or aluminum are stronger than those of the same weight and made of other materials such as hardwood. [5]
Various staffs of office derived from walking sticks or staffs are used by both western and eastern Christian churches, [6] [7] and for ceremonial purposes, as by Black Rod, the Tipstaff, Gold Stick and Silver Stick.
In North America, a walking cane is a walking stick curved down at the top, not usually actually made of cane but of materials including wood, metal or carbon fiber.
In modern times, walking sticks are usually only seen with formal attire. Retractable canes that reveal such properties as hidden compartments, pool sticks, or blades are popular among collectors. Handles have been made from many substances, both natural and manmade. Carved and decorated canes have turned the functional into the fantastic.
The idea of a fancy cane as a fashion accessory to go with top hat and tails has been popularized in many song-and-dance acts, especially by Fred Astaire in several of his films and songs such as Top Hat, White Tie and Tails and Puttin' On the Ritz , where he exhorts, "Come, let's mix where Rockefellers walk with sticks or umbrellas in their mitts." He danced with a cane frequently.
Some canes, known as "tippling canes" or "tipplers", have hollowed-out compartments near the top where flasks or vials of an alcoholic beverage can be hidden and sprung out on demand.
When used as a mobility or stability aid, canes are generally used in the hand opposite the injury or weakness, allowing the cane to be used for stability in a way that lets the user shift much of their weight onto the cane and away from their weaker side as they walk. Due to personal preference or a need to use the dominant hand some cane users hold the cane on their injured side.
In the U.S. Congress in 1856, Charles Sumner of Massachusetts criticized Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois and Andrew Butler of South Carolina for the Kansas–Nebraska Act. When a relative of Andrew Butler, Preston Brooks, heard of it, he felt that Sumner's behavior demanded retaliation, and beat him senseless on the floor of the Senate with a gutta-percha walking cane. [9] Although this event is commonly known as "the caning of Senator Charles Sumner", it was not a caning in the normal (especially British) sense of formal corporal punishment with a much more flexible and usually thinner rattan.
The nunchaku, "nunchucks", "chainsticks", or "chuka sticks" in English) is a traditional East-Asian martial arts weapon consisting of two sticks, connected to each other at their ends by a short metal chain or a rope. It is approximately 30 cm or 12 inches (sticks) and 2.5 cm or 1 inch (rope). A person who has practiced using this weapon is referred to in Japanese as nunchakuka.
A staff of office is a staff, the carrying of which often denotes an official's position, a social rank or a degree of social prestige.
A percussion mallet or beater is an object used to strike or beat a percussion instrument to produce its sound.
A club is a short staff or stick, usually made of wood, wielded as a weapon or tool since prehistory. There are several examples of blunt-force trauma caused by clubs in the past, including at the site of Nataruk in Turkana, Kenya, described as the scene of a prehistoric conflict between bands of hunter-gatherers 10,000 years ago.
An assistive cane is a walking stick used as a crutch or mobility aid. A cane can help redistribute weight from a lower leg that is weak or painful, improve stability by increasing the base of support, and provide tactile information about the ground to improve balance. In the US, ten percent of adults older than 65 years use a cane, and 4.6 percent use walkers.
Stick-fighting, stickfighting, or stick fighting, is a variety of martial arts which use simple long, slender, blunt, hand-held, generally wooden "sticks" for fighting, such as a gun staff, bō, jō, walking stick, baston, arnis sticks or similar weapons. Some techniques can also be used with a sturdy umbrella or even with a sword or dagger in its scabbard.
A swordstick or cane-sword is a cane containing a hidden blade or sword. The term is typically used to describe European weapons from around the 18th century. But similar devices have been used throughout history, notably the Roman dolon, the Japanese shikomizue and the Indian gupti.
A swagger stick is a short stick or riding crop usually carried by a uniformed person as a symbol of authority. A swagger stick is shorter than a staff or cane, and is usually made from rattan. Its use derives from the vine staff carried by Roman centurions as an emblem of office.
Trekking poles are a common hiking accessory that function to assist walkers with their rhythm, to provide stability, and reduce strain on joints on rough terrain.
Okinawan kobudō (沖縄古武道), literally "old martial way of Okinawa", is the weapon systems of Okinawan martial arts.
A pace stick is a long stick usually carried by warrant officer and non-commissioned officer drill instructors in the British and Commonwealth armed forces as an aid to military drill.
A shillelagh is a wooden walking stick and club or cudgel, typically made from a stout knotty blackthorn stick with a large knob at the top. It is associated with Ireland and Irish folklore.
The chigiriki (契木) is a Japanese flail weapon. It consists of a solid or hollow wood or iron staff with an iron weight and chain on the end, sometimes retractable. The chigiriki is a more aggressive variation of the parrying weapon kusarigama. It can be used to strike or entangle the opponent as well as to parry his blows and to capture or incapacitate an opponent's weapon.
In field hockey, each player carries a stick and cannot take part in the game without it. The stick for an adult is usually in the range 89–95 cm (35–38 in) long. A maximum length of 105 cm (41.3") was stipulated from 2015. The maximum permitted weight is 737 grams. The majority of players use a stick in the range 19 oz to 22 oz. Traditionally hockey sticks were made of hickory, ash or mulberry wood with the head of the sticks being hand carved and therefore required skilled craftsmen to produce. Sticks made of wood continue to be made but the higher grade sticks are now manufactured from composite materials which were first permitted after 1992. These sticks usually contain a combination of fibreglass, aramid fiber and carbon fibre in varying proportions according to the characteristics required.
A cane gun is a walking cane with a hidden gun built into it. Cane guns are sometimes mistaken for similar-looking "poacher's guns".
Canne de combat is a French combat sport. As weapon, it uses a canne or cane designed for fighting. Canne de combat was standardized in the 1970s for sporting competition by Maurice Sarry. The canne is very light, made of chestnut wood and slightly tapered. A padded suit and a fencing mask are worn for protection.
The makila is a traditional Basque walking stick, and is notable as both a practical tool and a cultural symbol of authority and strength.
A baton is a roughly cylindrical club made of wood, rubber, plastic, or metal. It is carried as a compliance tool and defensive weapon by law-enforcement officers, correctional staff, security guards and military personnel. The name baton comes from the French bâton (stick), derived from Old French Baston, from Latin bastum.
Listed here are the weapons of pencak silat. The most common are the machete, staff, kris, sickle, spear, and kerambit. Because Southeast Asian society was traditionally based around agriculture, many of these weapons were originally farming tools.
The baston is one of the primary weapons of Arnis and Filipino martial arts. It is also known as yantok, olisi, palo, pamalo, garrote, caña, cane, arnis stick, eskrima stick or simply, stick.
A walking sticks expert (rabologist) is cataloguing great collection of walking sticks.
[A Bishop] may carry a walking stick ...