Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A knob, knot, or other small protuberance.
  • noun One of a series of small ridges or grooves on the surface or edge of a metal object, such as a thumbscrew, to aid in gripping.
  • transitive verb To provide with knurls; mill.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A knot; a hard substance; a nodule of stone; a protuberance in the bark of a tree.
  • noun A deformed dwarf; a humpback.
  • noun In photography, a milled-edge roller used for dotting and softening outrunning lines and making dark spaces lighter.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A contorted knot in wood; a crossgrained protuberance; a nodule; a boss or projection.
  • noun One who, or that which, is crossgrained.
  • transitive verb To provide with ridges, to assist the grasp, as in the edge of a flat knob, or coin; to mill.

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

  • noun A contorted knot in wood.
  • noun A crossgrained protuberance; a nodule; a boss or projection.
  • noun A lined or crossgrained pattern of ridges or indentations rolled or pressed into a part for grip.
  • verb To roll or press a pattern of ridges or indentations into a part for grip.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[ Probably diminutive of knur.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

knur +‎ -le (“diminutive”), from Middle English knar ("knot in wood"), earlier sense “a stone”, of Unknown origin.

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Examples

  • It's that scanner that peeks under your clothing, creating a ghostly but realistic image of your naked body, accurate down to every curve, knurl, protuberance, carbuncle, wen, bleb, wart and wattle and garfunkel.

    Airport frisk assessment: Gene gets rubbed the wrong way Gene Weingarten 2010

  • Think a rough-hewn, Teutonic White Goddess, about a Romantic masterpiece rather than a Welsh riddle-poem, and you'll have the flavor of this weird knurl of taffy.

    Kenneth Hite's Journal princeofcairo 2005

  • He wore a black coat and waistcoat, old-fashioned in style, with the folds of a tartan plaid draped over his shoulder, caught up with a brooch whose golden gleam was echoed by the ornamental knurl atop the dirk the old man held, his fingers bent and gnarled with arthritis.

    A Breath of Snow and Ashes Gabaldon, Diana 2005

  • He hunched forward, wrenching his arms higher and higher up his back until his shoulders felt as if they were about to dislocate, until at last he was holding the little round knurl of the bolt between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand.

    Fear Itself Jonathan Nasaw 2003

  • Instead, I touched the hilt of the dirk; it was topped with a small knurl of gold, roughly shaped like a bird in flight.

    Drums of Autumn Gabaldon, Diana 1997

  • "Thou wilt do that with a Mauser sometime which has no knurl on the bolt and it will fire."

    For Whom The Bell Tolls Hemingway, Ernest, 1899-1961 1940

  • "Thou wilt do that with a Mauser sometime which has no knurl on the bolt and it will fire."

    For Whom The Bell Tolls Hemingway, Ernest, 1899-1961 1940

  • He winks out of the corner of his eye at me and says, 'Your old daddy is tough isn't he?' and shows me the end of his thumb calloused and hard as the knurl of white oak; only fire could clean it to the original skin.

    Confessions of Boyhood John Albee 1874

  • I have changed the feature properties for the split to my newly created knurled 'colour', then repeated this for the same knurl in the other colour and then added suppression columns to the table to switch between each colour style depending on the colour of the main part.

    All Discussion Groups: Message List - root 2010

  • In addition, a knurl ensures a firm seat in the drill-hole.

    Electronicstalk - electronics industry news 2010

Comments

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  • Sunday slipping astern in the spyboat, me diddling the knurls of the focal knobs, in a grump.

    John Latta, Isola di Rifiuti

    January 9, 2007

  • 1. A knob, knot, or other small protuberance.

    2. One of a series of small ridges or grooves on the surface or edge of a metal object, such as a thumbscrew, to aid in gripping.

    November 22, 2007