Why is it called a knife?

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

I was talking with a friend the other day and he asked me why a knife is called a knife. This chap is well educated and we get into deep topics and lengthy historic discussions of words, songs, and many other things. He said, "knifes" and I comment that it wasn't quite correct, but allowable. This brought him to ask where the odd word came from in the first place. Never missing an opportunity to expand knowledge, I told him where the word "knife" comes from. He said he never knew anything about the sources. I guess we all know the word and just never gave it any thought. The word evolved over 1000 years from around 500BCE to 500CE.
So:

Knives were called many things in different parts of the world.

The word "knife" came into English when the Vikings took over the British Isles. They carried a bladed tool/weapon that we would call a dirk or dagger. But where did the Vikings get their word??

They got the word from Proto-Germanic peoples who called a short sharp cutting instrument a Knibaz .. pronounced ka-nee-bus. Back then an initial K or C was pronounced. Contrary to what you might think, these Germanic people didn't come from Germany ... they went from Denmark to Scandinavia and then down into Germany.

This word changed into middle German Kneif . pronounced Ka-neef (which now means pinch in German). Then to low German Knif ... still pronounced Ka-Neef. The Nordics called it a Knifr ... pronounced Ka-neef-ra.

The English called it a Cnif .. pronounced Ka-neef, same as the early Germanic folks. At that time, they did not use a "K" in English letters.

As the English language changed the initial C letter became K and later on the ending "e" was added to make Knife ... pronounced Ka-neef-a. As language evolved Ka-neef-a became knife pronounced ... nīf ...With no "K".

To make things more complicated, the English had irregular verbs and plural nouns. One Knife became two or more Knives. Today, that is changing and knifes is allowed, but not fully adopted by knifemakers.

Other side-steps along the way- French canif (pen sharpening knife), Dutch knijp, German kanip. These Dutch word and German word evolved into meaning "pinch" today, probably from the Latin root word for pierce with a point.
How French and German changed their old words for knife to couteau and messer (food sword) are equally strange and influenced by the people who came from the south later on.

It would not surprise me if the English word becomes nife eventually.

 

[pafka]

I suppose this is known to many of you, but if it is not, here is a fun trivia: the word pistol has (*) Bohemian origin.

During the early 14th hundreds in Bohemia, the Hussite movement started a revolution (and a civil war) whose objective was to reform the Catholic church, in order to make it more accessible to common folk. As such, the supporters of this movement were mostly peasants, with some of the lower nobility joining too. This was not a peaceful time, and the church opposed this movement with force. Hussites had to fight.

The military leaders of the movement (most notably Jan Žižka) managed to succesfully offset the lack of military training of their troops by adopting technology that was already known, but maybe not used on such scale. They used so called wagon forts, crossbows, and also primitive firearms. These firearms were not much more than a primitive barrel with a flashhole, mounted on a piece of wood. It was much easier to train someone to shoot such a thing - e.g. easier than a bow. Even better, they used "fire teams", with one person firing the weapon, and others reloading.

Like I said, the primitive barrel was very simple, and resembled a flute or a whistle. And the Czech word for a whistle is "píšťala" (pronunciation here: https://en.bab.la/pronunciation/czech/píšťala). You can see (or rather hear) how phonetically it is similar to the modern word.

* Wiki indicates that there are different possibilities for the origin of the word, the other being an Italian firearm producing city of Pistoia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pistol. I know which version I will be sticking to

Edit: forgot to add - the word "howitzer" also may have similar origin due to the Czech word "houfnice" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howitzer. Same period, same type of firearm, just bigger.