Talk:knive

RFV discussion: February–March 2016
Supposedly a misspelling(!) of connive. Seems to actually be a variant (misspelling? alternative spelling?) of knife. - -sche (discuss) 21:56, 5 February 2016 (UTC)


 * Most of what I find is, as you say, a variant of knife, and I have added that to the entry with a handfull of the (very) many citations. There are, however, a few I come up with that look more like connive. Mostly as the adjective kniving (conniving), but with one that uses it as a verb:
 * Kiwima (talk) 00:47, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Many of those are a little iffy. The backstabbing context goes equally well with both knifing and conniving. --WikiTiki89 01:39, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Kiwima (talk) 00:47, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Many of those are a little iffy. The backstabbing context goes equally well with both knifing and conniving. --WikiTiki89 01:39, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Kiwima (talk) 00:47, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Many of those are a little iffy. The backstabbing context goes equally well with both knifing and conniving. --WikiTiki89 01:39, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Kiwima (talk) 00:47, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Many of those are a little iffy. The backstabbing context goes equally well with both knifing and conniving. --WikiTiki89 01:39, 6 February 2016 (UTC)


 * Impressive! Yeah, the "backstabbing and kniving games" is arguably using a knife-related sense, but "charged with kniving" is clearly the RFVed sense, and "kniving, decietful[sic?]" seems like it, too. (Well, as you note, it seems like the adjective kniving, not the verb knive. But the basic sense is there.) - -sche (discuss) 01:41, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I looked for "kniv/e/ed/ing/ with" and "kniv/e/ed/ing/ together" on Google Books and found nothing, so I would agree that the verb looks unlikely. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:20, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
 * That's what I thought at first, but I think it's misleading because of the metaphorical knife involved in "backstabbing". "Conniving" would make more sense, since there's not an actual knife involved in backstabbing; if there were, it'd be redundant to say "kniving" for "knifing", and there's no particularly good reason for the sentence to refer to one metaphorical and one actual knife in parallel.  P Aculeius (talk) 05:45, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Use of the verb:
 * 1873, The United Service Magazine - Volume 133 - Page 231:
 * [...] naked and wounded, had only escaped being murdered by marvellous presence of mind in flinging such bright trinkets as he possessed among the monkeyish gang of murderers who were commencing to knive him, and now he sank quite [...]
 * 1894, The Month - Volume 81 - Page 172:
 * At length as an ape he was fain The nuts of the forest to rive; Till he took to the low-lying plain, And proceeded his fellow to knive.
 * 1984, Peter Barkworth, More about Acting - Page 182:
 * [...] do with the food: on which line I knived a potato on to my fork, when I lifted it to my mouth and when I ate it.
 * 1996, Sudhir Kakar, The Colors of Violence:
 * "If I hear that two of our people have been attacked and killed at the wooden bridge it takes me just five minutes to knive five of them."
 * 2008, John Kinsella, ‎Alvin Pang, Over there: poems from Singapore and Australia:
 * My mother stands beside a board, the onion falls in equal hoops, steady her eye, her mind abroad, she knives the ringlets into groups. Leasnam (talk) 02:06, 8 February 2016 (UTC)


 * I can't tell what sense the 2008 citation is using. The 1984 citation is a good citation of the "knife" sense, of which many other citations have been found. It's the "connive" sense which only seems to be an adjective (kniving, a misconstruction of /k(ə)naɪvɪŋ/). - -sche (discuss) 02:15, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Oh, I see, my bad Leasnam (talk) 02:20, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
 * No problem; thanks for the additional citations (particularly good as they show forms other than kniving, the form used by all the previously-found citations). - -sche (discuss) 05:35, 8 February 2016 (UTC)


 * As she's preparing onions at a (cutting) board, the word would logically refer to using a knife, not to conniving. Not very happy with the 1894 example, as it looks like a humorously improvised rhyme.  The others are convincing, assuming that they're not typos; f and v are next to each other on a keyboard. P Aculeius (talk) 04:11, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Ah, good point, I somehow missed the mention of onions; it makes sense now. I can find citations going back to 1733 (Practical Husbandman and Planter: "all small weak Shoots should be cut close to the main Stems; and (generally speaking) nipping with your Nails, is a better Way than kniving of them"), so it's not (just) the product of modern keyboards. Also, it's in Merriam-Webster Unabridged, defined tersely as "knife". In fact, to knive (attested since 1733) seems to be older than to knife (attested since the 1800s per Merriam-Webster), which I suppose makes sense, since it parallels to strive (verb) vs strife (noun). - -sche (discuss) 06:00, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Not strictly relevant, but William Henry Armstrong, in The Siamese Twins (which contains a lot of wordplay), in Lays of Love (1832), page 68, writes: "But fear not these con-kniving men / Most lovely Gemini," italics sic. - -sche (discuss) 06:00, 8 February 2016 (UTC)


 * RFV-failed. (kniving, OTOH, is attested.) - -sche (discuss) 21:14, 20 March 2016 (UTC)