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Fencing comes from Middle English fensen, a shortened form of defensen, meaning 'to defend.' The word is a clipping — the 'de' fell off and the sport kept only the second half. French escrime, the formal name for the art, comes from Frankish *skirmjan (to defend, to shield), which also gave English the word 'skirmish.' Both words name the art from the perspective of not getting hit.

Italian masters codified fencing into a teachable system in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Fiore dei Liberi wrote Fior di Battaglia around 1409. Achille Marozzo published Opera Nova in 1536. These manuals treated swordsmanship as a geometry problem: angles of attack, lines of defense, the mechanics of leverage applied to edged metal. The rapier replaced the heavier medieval sword, and the art became more technical, faster, and more lethal.

The sport version emerged in the eighteenth century with the invention of the foil — a light practice weapon with a blunted tip covered in a small leather cap called a button. The word foil itself may come from French refouler (to turn back), naming the weapon by its inability to cause harm. The three modern weapons — foil, épée, and sabre — each have different target areas and rules, reflecting different historical combat traditions.

Fencing was one of the original nine sports at the 1896 Athens Olympics. The electrical scoring system, which registers touches through wired jackets and weapons, was introduced in 1933 for épée and later extended to foil and sabre. The sport that began as mortal combat is now decided by circuits. The word that meant survival now means a hobby scored by electricity.