Knives

How to spell knives

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce knives

What does knives mean?

1. nounMore than one knife; cutting tools or weapons with a blade and handle.

Knives in a sentence

• The chef sharpened all of his knives before the dinner service.

• The cutlery drawer holds the forks, spoons, and knives.

Where does knives come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the plural of knife, which comes from the late Old English cnif, a word for a cutting blade. The initial 'k' was once fully pronounced, so speakers really did say a hard 'k' before the 'n'; that sound was lost from English speech around the 1600s, leaving the silent 'k' that traps writers today. The word is closely related to the Old Norse knifr, and similar forms appear across the older Germanic and Scandinavian languages, which is why some scholars think it entered English partly through Norse contact. English regularly turns a final 'f' into 'v' when a word like this becomes plural, the same pattern seen in life and lives or wife and wives. So 'knives' carries two old spelling quirks at once: a silent opening 'k' and the f-to-v shift that hides the singular's original ending.

How the word is built

• knife (from Old English cnif)
• -s plural, with the f changing to v before the ending