Bowie knife
2
7.7
- noun
- /ˈboʊi naɪf/
:
cuchillo Bowie
- During the camping trip, she used her Bowie knife to prepare the firewood.
- Bowie knife in a sheath
Examples
-
He reached down next to his chair and put two Ziploc bags with Lloyd's shears and Bowie knife in them on the table.
Fiction book (1999) -
Shiny new Bowie knives were brandished for the camera.
Fiction book (1997) -
LeRoi pulled out his Bowie knife from its sheath.
Fiction book (2001) -
Pierre swore softly, drew his Bowie knife, and sliced through the ropes, then rolled the canvas over several times.
Fiction book (1996) -
After a few hundred yards, well past the pickets, he crawled up the steep bank, pulled himself over the top, then checked to see that his cap-and-ball revolver and Bowie knife, the same knife he'd once pulled on a highwayman years before, were still secured to his belt.
Fiction book (1995) -
Peacemakers and, in its own rawhide sheath, his old Bowie knife, wiped clean and polished up so bright he can see himself in its blade, the staghorn handle newly silver-studded as though to mark its most recent history.
Fiction book (2000) -
He skillfully opened the package with his Bowie knife.
-
The hunter always carried a sharp Bowie knife for skinning game.
Synonyms
∞
1.0
A tool with a sharp blade and handle used for cutting or as a weapon
10
2.8
A large sharp knife used by hunters to cut meat and skin animals
How Big
Surface Forms
Morphology
Bowie + knife
A B1 learner who knows 'knife' will recognize 'Bowie knife' as a type or name of knife (the headword 'Bowie' functions as an eponym), so the category is clear. However, the specific sense—large, heavy hunting knife with a single-edged blade and crossguard—is not derivable from the constituents alone and requires cultural or encyclopedic knowledge, making the expression only partially transparent.
Etymology
Bowie knife comes from a frontiersman called James Bowie. One popular story says he used a big fighting knife in a famous fight, and people started to call similar large knives 'Bowie knives'. That's why today the name means 'a large, heavy hunting knife'.