Other forms: daggers
A dagger is a short pointed knife used as a weapon. Draw a dagger, a jewelled dagger, dagger in his belt.
It is designed for stabbing rather than cutting, which is what distinguishes it from a knife, and it was standard everyday wear for centuries. Look daggers at somebody means to glare. In typography, the dagger is a footnote mark. Note that the origin of the word is uncertain.
1noundaggerA short pointed knife used as a weapon.
“The assassin pulled a dagger from under his cloak.”
dagger is a weapon.
Middle English daggere probably comes from Old French dague, of uncertain origin.
Old French
dague
Middle English
daggere
English, today
dagger
Built from
From Middle English daggere, daggare, dagard, probably adapted from Old French dague (1229), related to Occitan -, Italian -, Spanish daga, Dutch dagge, German Degen, Middle Low German dagge (“knife's point”), Old Norse daggarðr, Danish daggert, Faroese daggari, Welsh dager, dagr, Breton dac, Albanian thikë (“a knife, dagger”), thek (“to stab, to pierce with a sharp object”). In English attested from the 1380s. The ultimate origin of the word is unclear. Grimm suspects Celtic origin.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA