A shiv is a crude knife made or carried as a weapon. Make a shiv, stabbed with a shiv, a prison shiv.
It belongs to prisons, where anything with an edge becomes one, and it is the standard word in American reporting. It comes from Romani for a knife, by way of British criminal slang.
1nounshivA crude knife made or carried as a weapon.
“The prisoner hid a shiv made from a toothbrush in his mattress.”
shiv is a weapon.
From Romani chiv, a knife or blade, through British criminal slang.
rom
chive
English, today
shiv
Built from
First attested 1915. From chive, chieve, chife, chiv (“knife”), from rom chive, chiv, chivvomengro (“knife, dagger, blade”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA