Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A short sword or dagger, used in hunting and for various purposes for which the long sword was too cumbrous.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • And thou without bow and arrow or wood-knife, I warrant me, said the witch.

    The Water of the Wondrous Isles 2007

  • Lincoln green, richly embroidered with gold, and crossed by the gay baldric which sustained a bugle-horn, and a wood-knife instead of a sword, became its master, as did his other vestments of court or of war.

    Kenilworth 2004

  • At his side was his long bow, carefully wrapped in water-resistant flying-dragon skin, and from the belt which supported his short breeches of tanned duocorn hide swung a two-foot blade -- half wood-knife, half sword.

    Star Born Andre Norton 1958

  • At his side was his long bow, carefully wrapped in water-resistant flying-dragon skin, and from the belt which supported his short breeches of tanned duo corn hide swung a two-foot blade-half wood-knife, half sword.

    Star Born Norton, Andre 1957

  • At his side was his long bow, carefully wrapped in water-resistant flying-dragon skin, and from the belt which supported his short breeches of tanned duo corn hide swung a two-foot blade-half wood-knife, half sword.

    Star Born Norton, Andre 1957

  • They fitted it into a piece of bark, and stuck it in the grave they had made for it on the edge of the clearing, and they put a flint and steel, and a wood-knife, and some food and things in with it, though no living baby could have had any use for half of them, let alone a dead one.

    In Court and Kampong Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula Hugh Charles Clifford 1903

  • 'This is one of my daughter's tricks,' he said to himself, 'but if I had my big axe and my wood-knife, I would not be long making a way through this,' and off he went home and brought back the axe and the wood-knife.

    The Lilac Fairy Book Andrew Lang 1878

  • 'This is one of my daughter's tricks,' he said to himself, 'but if I had my big axe and my wood-knife, I would not be long making a way through this,' and off he went home and brought back the axe and the wood-knife.

    The Lilac Fairy Book Andrew Lang 1878

  • At the back of it was the iron catch with which to hitch his wood-knife, and the tiger's tooth had grazed one side of the iron, and cut it as if one had worked at the iron with a steel file.

    Gold, Sport, and Coffee Planting in Mysore 1875

  • Without axe or wood-knife to hew a way, the tangled brushwood he knew to be impassable, having observed how thick it was when coming.

    After London Or, Wild England Richard Jefferies 1867

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