Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A small pocketknife.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A small pocket-knife: so called from its former use in making and mending quill pens.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A small pocketknife; formerly, a knife used for making and mending quill pens.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A small
pocketknife ; a smallknife with ablade which folds into the hand. Penknives often incorporate other tools such ascorkscrews , and are generally smaller than pocketknives as a group.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a small pocketknife; originally used to cut quill pens
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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But his penknife was a tiny thing, suitable for sharpening quills and cutting paper, not to doing battle with monstrous stone dogs.
Tran Siberian Michael J. Solender 2010
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But his penknife was a tiny thing, suitable for sharpening quills and cutting paper, not to doing battle with monstrous stone dogs.
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Take instead a sabre such as befits a gentleman: now I lay at your feet this my penknife, which is the most precious thing that I possess in all the world.
Pan Tadeusz Or, the Last Foray in Lithuania; a Story of Life Among Polish Gentlefolk in the Years 1811 and 1812 Adam Mickiewicz 1826
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But he had faithful servants; with the blood of his wound I wet my broadsword, called the penknife — you have surely heard of my penknife, famous at every diet, market, and village assembly — and swore to notch it on the shoulders of the
Pan Tadeusz Or, the Last Foray in Lithuania; a Story of Life Among Polish Gentlefolk in the Years 1811 and 1812 Adam Mickiewicz 1826
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He pulled a penknife from his pocket, flicked it open, and walked back to the carton.
Dark Secrets 2: No Time to Die the Deep End of Fear Elizabeth Chandler 2011
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If you have a straw and a penknife you can make a loud instrument!
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Danny Boyle is about to embark on the filming of 127 Hours, the story of mountain climber Aron Ralston, who was forced to amputate his own arm with a penknife after being pinned under a boulder.
Danny Boyle Will Use Two Cinematographers for 127 Hours | /Film 2010
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In case you're scratching your head, Aron Ralston was the hiker who amputated his own hand with a penknife when he got pinned by a giant boulder in the mountains of Utah.
Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval: The Folk Hero Franchise: Marketing the Chilean Miner Brand Linda Kaplan Thaler 2010
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Cumming himself became a figure of legend when, crashing his car in France, he stoically extricated himself from the wreckage by amputating his foot with a penknife.
MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service, 1909-1949 by Keith Jeffery Robert McCrum 2010
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But they also fell victim to more exotic problems: one man suffered "a smart pain in walking", undoubtedly caused by the 19 penknives and one penknife case he proved to have swallowed.
Amputations, acid gargles and ammonia rubs: Royal Navy surgeons' 1793-1880 journals revealed Maev Kennedy 2010
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