Stilleto

While my friends and I were out cavorting at and around Hendrix Formal, I spotted a woman wearing a pair of stiletto heels unlike any I had ever seen. Two thoughts came to my mind at that moment: how/why do women wear those things, and why are they called stilettos?

In the AHD, the definition for stiletto is "a small dagger with a slender tapering blade" or "a small sharp-pointed instrument that makes eyelet holes in needlework". The OED has a similar definition: "a short dagger with a blade in proportion to its breadth." The OED also states that the word stiletto was not used to describe the size of a high heel shoe until 1953.

Stiletto is an Italian diminutive of stilo, which means dagger. Stilo came from the Latin word stilus, which means stylus or spike.