Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun One whose trade is the sharpening of knives on a grindstone.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • A gentleman may be a rogue; and a knifegrinder may be a philosopher and philanthropist.

    The Irrational Knot Being the Second Novel of His Nonage George Bernard Shaw 1903

  • N.B. If Canning in his Eton days immortalised sapphically a knifegrinder, why shouldn't a young Carthusian similarly celebrate his gingham?

    My Life as an Author Tupper, Martin F 1886

  • (a) Human: his two wives, his three friends, viz. sons of the prime minister, chief constable, and richest merchant (varied as barber); his three friends — knifegrinder, blacksmith, carpenter; his half-brother by ogress stepmother; his three friends — a goldsmith, a carpenter and his parrot; one friend: of heroine, two girls.

    Tales of the Punjab 1894

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