The Etymology of Machete
Machete entered English in 1598 from Spanish, where it had been recorded since around 1550 as a diminutive of macho — and macho here is not the modern adjective for masculinity but the older Spanish noun meaning sledgehammer or heavy mallet, derived from Latin marcus, hammer. So a machete is, etymologically, a little sledgehammer: the name describes the weight and chopping force of the blade rather than its cutting edge. (The masculine-adjective sense of macho, "male", is an unrelated Spanish word from Latin masculus.) English picked up the term through the Caribbean and Spanish-American sugar trade, where the long broad-bladed knife was indispensable for clearing cane, brush, and forest. Latin marcus also lies behind French marteau and Italian martello, hammer, and behind the proper name Mark — all distant cousins of an everyday machete swung daily across the tropics.