Other forms: knives
A knife is a sharp tool used for cutting. A bread knife, a sharp knife, knife and fork.
A sharp knife is safer than a blunt one, because a blunt blade slips instead of cutting — which is the first thing any kitchen teaches. Types are specialised: bread, paring, boning, chef's. Carrying one in public is an offence in Britain without good reason. Note under the knife, meaning in surgery; knife-edge, meaning finely balanced; and that you can cut the atmosphere with a knife.
1nounknifeA sharp tool used for cutting.
“Use a sharp knife to cut the bread, or it will squash.”
Patterna knife and fork · a sharp / blunt knife · cut sth with a knife · kitchen / bread knife · knife edge
2verbstabTo stab somebody with such a tool.
“The victim was knifed in a fight outside the nightclub.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
knife is a cutting tool.
Knife → the silent K of KNEE and knock
The k is silent, as in knee and knock: you cut the bread with a knife and never once hear the k.
hooks ontoknee
Late Old English cnif came from Old Norse knifr, probably from a root meaning to pinch. The initial k was pronounced until about the seventeenth century, as it still is in the Scandinavian languages.
Proto-Indo-European
*gneybʰ-
Proto-Germanic
*knībaz
Proto-West Germanic
*knīb
Old Norse
knífr
Old English
cnīf
Middle English
knyf
English, today
knife
Built from
From Middle English knyf, knif, from late Old English cnīf, from Old Norse knífr or Proto-West Germanic knīb, from Proto-Germanic knībaz, from knīpaną (“to pinch”), Proto-Indo-European gneybʰ- (compare Lithuanian gnýbti, žnýbti (“to pinch”), gnaibis (“pinching”)). Displaced native sax, from seax; and coutel, qwetyll (“knife”) from coutel.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA