knife thrower
1
6.7
- noun
- /naɪf ˈθroʊər/
:
lanzador de cuchillos
- During the show, the knife thrower impressively threw knives around his assistant without harm.
Examples
-
The audience gasped as the knife thrower performed his daring act with precision and skill.
-
Magnifico the knife-thrower has only missed once, when he hit me on the inside of my thigh.
Fiction book (1999) -
As we left the theater, we agreed that it had been a skillful performance, though we couldn't help feeling that the knife thrower had gone too far.
Fiction book (1997) -
The only knife throwers any of us had ever seen were in the circus sideshow or the carnival ten-in-one, along with the fat lady and the human skeleton.
Fiction book (1997) -
When we learned that Hensch, the knife thrower, was stopping in our town for a single performance at eight o'clock on Saturday night, we hesitated, wondering what we felt.
Fiction book (1997) -
The more we thought about it, the more uneasy we became, and in the nights that followed, when we woke from troubling dreams, we remembered the traveling knife thrower with agitation and dismay.
Fiction book (1997) -
The knife thrower aimed carefully before launching a blade at the target.
Synonyms
14
2.2
A person who sends a thing through the air with a quick arm movement, for example a javelin athlete
How Dangerous
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound 'knife thrower' is directly compositional: a person (thrower) who throws knives, so a B1 learner who knows 'knife' and 'thrower' can infer the meaning. This follows a common agent + object compound pattern found across languages, making the sense immediately predictable rather than idiomatic.
Etymology
Knife thrower comes from the clear image of a person who throws sharp knives at a target or around a partner in a show, a risky act that needs great skill. That's why the phrase means 'a performer who throws knives as part of an act'.