The meaning of the term “martial arts”

There are two interpretations of the expression “Martial arts”.

The first one:

The word 'martial' derives from the name of Mars, the Roman god of war. The term 'Martial Arts' literally means arts of war. This term comes from 15th century Europeans who were referring to their own fighting arts that are today known as Historical European martial arts. A practitioner of martial arts is referred to as a martial artist. In popular culture, the term "Martial Arts" often specifically refers to the combat systems that originated in Asian cultures. However, the term actually refers to any sort of codified combat systems, regardless of origin.

The second one:

If you are asking about the Asian ideology of the term "martial" - you have to look at the Chinese ideogram, or the character, which is pronounced "wu". In Okinawan dialect and Japanese, it is "bu", as in bushido and bujutsu. The term DOES NOT mean war. It consists of radicals that indicate the stopping of a conflict. Wu means Stop Fight, NOT war. Wushu translates to "stop fight art". The same characters read by an Okinawan or Japanese will say bujutsu. It is the same word. The whole "mars = god of war" thing is a western ideology and doesn't apply when you are referring to arts from China, Okinawa or Japan. So "martial" - "wu", "bu" means Stop Fight. Take the character to any Chinese person you know who can read , preferably an older person, and ask what is the break-down of the radicals and actual translation.
Both basically mean the same: the art of stopping the fight, by killing the opponent.


All the original martial arts were taught to solders, and involved use of weapons. If you look at all traditional martial styles, they are all one sided. They always block with the left hand and attack with the right. This comes directly from the times when fighters carried shields in their left hand and a weapon (a club, a sword, a battle axe or a spear) in their right hand. All techniques that were taught had as its only aim to kill the opponent. Any bare hand techniques that were taught, were taught in order to enable a disarmed fighter to disarm and kill the opponent, get the opponents weapon, and continue fighting using the weapon. So these techniques had as its aim killing the opponent as quickly as possible, using striking and kicking. Submissions and locks, were techniques never taught in traditional martial arts.

Today very few people are actually learning martial arts. This is because most teachers, who know the real martial arts, don’t want to teach real martial art, the arts of stopping the fight by killing the attacker. The other teachers can’t teach real martial arts, because they have never actually learned the real martial arts themselves. Their own teachers never taught them. So they teach what then know, which is described by one of my Bagua teachers as “The stuff you do when you are feeling merciful”. WU means to stop the fight. By letting your attacker get up after your attack, or worse stay standing, you are prolonging the fight. In real fight there are no points. As one of my Bagua teachers told us once: “Martial arts are brutal, cruel, crisp and cold”.

I heard someone once saying: "I am not going to fight you, i am going to hurt you." This pretty much sums it all up.