40 Fun Facts About Knives

Who first used the English name Swiss Army knife after the Second World War, in place of Offiziersmesser?

American soldiers stationed in Europe took the knives home as souvenirs, and swapped the German name, which simply means officer's knife, for an English one.

Which frontiersman, later killed at the Alamo, made a big fighting knife famous in the Sandbar Fight?

Jim Bowie did not design the blade himself: his brother Rezin is credited with creating the pattern for him. Requests for copies poured in once the brawl made national news.

What does a smooth honing steel do to a kitchen knife's edge, despite its nickname of sharpening steel?

A honing steel straightens it: the smooth rod removes no metal and only pushes a bent edge back into line. Cooks can steel a knife every day but sharpen it far less often.

Which French cardinal reputedly had table knives blunted to stop guests picking their teeth?

Richelieu is said to have set the fashion around 1637. In 1669 Louis XIV turned it into law, banning pointed knives in the hope that blunt tips would reduce knife crime.

The curved kukri is the signature blade of which troops recruited into the British and Indian armies?

Gurkhas carry the kukri as a weapon and an everyday chopping tool, and it is the national weapon of Nepal. Britain began recruiting them in 1815, while still at war with their kingdom.

Which stone, set along Mesoamerican wooden swords, can be many times sharper than a steel scalpel?

Obsidian is volcanic glass, and a well-made blade's cutting edge is only about three nanometres thick. It still looks smooth under an electron microscope, where steel looks jagged.

Which James Bond actor plays the detective Benoit Blanc in Rian Johnson's 2019 whodunnit Knives Out?

Daniel Craig leads an eleven-actor ensemble as the private detective, who is summoned after a bestselling mystery novelist dies following his own birthday party.

Which classic French knife cut turns carrots or potatoes into long thin strips resembling matchsticks?

Julienne first appears in print in a French cookbook of 1722, yet the origin of the name remains uncertain. Chefs also know the same cut as allumette.

The penknife takes its name from its original job of thinning and pointing which writing tools?

Quills had to be trimmed before they could serve as dip pens, and the same small blade later re-pointed worn nibs. The Latin word penna, the root of pen, means feather.

The butterfly knife, or balisong, has two swinging handles and is most closely tied to which Asian country?

In the Philippines, hollow-ground balisongs doubled as straight razors before conventional razors became available. The knife was an everyday pocket tool in the Tagalog region.

Which short-bladed kitchen tool is ideal for peeling fruit, trimming garnishes and deveining prawns?

A paring knife usually has a plain edge and goes by the name petty knife in some kitchens. To pare is simply to trim away an outer layer.

Which serrated kitchen staple was patented in 1919 with angled grooves that cut without heavy downward pressure?

The bread knife patented by Joseph Burns of Syracuse arrived about a decade before the automatic loaf slicer. A German firm had shown a serrated model at Chicago's world's fair in 1893.

Which Japanese all-purpose kitchen knife, created in the 1940s, has a name meaning three virtues?

Santoku may refer to its three ingredients (fish, meat and vegetables) or its three tasks: chopping, dicing and slicing. It favours a single downward cut over the rocking motion of a European knife.

On a knife, what name is given to the part of the blade that extends back into the handle?

The tang is called a full tang when it runs the whole length of the grip, with handle scales pinned or bolted on around it. A partial tang stops short.

Which metal, making up at least 10.5 percent of the alloy, keeps a stainless steel knife from rusting?

Chromium forms an invisible protective film on the surface, and the film can heal itself when exposed to oxygen. The alloy's English discoverer first called it rustless steel.

Which gemstone, ground to dust, coats the wheels used to sharpen the very hard edge of a ceramic knife?

Diamond is one of the few substances harder than the zirconia blade, which scores about 8.5 on the Mohs scale against 4.5 for normal steel. The trade-off is brittleness: twist the blade and it snaps.

Which curved blade with a handle at each end is rocked back and forth to mince herbs and garlic?

Mezzaluna is Italian for half moon, after the crescent curve of its blade. Some are sold with a cutting board that has a shallow hollow to match.

Which French technique stacks and rolls basil or spinach leaves, then slices them into ribbons?

Chiffonade builds on chiffon, from an old French word for a rag, describing the state of the leaves once they are cut. The slices are made straight across the rolled-up stack.

What is the purpose of the small hole found in the top front corner of many meat cleavers?

Hanging it up on a wall is what the hole is there for. A cleaver's edge is made especially tough, so that it survives repeated blows through meat, cartilage and soft bone.

Which French knife cut, the smallest dice of all, yields tiny cubes often used to garnish consommé?

Brunoise means cubes of about three millimetres, and in France itself just one to two. They are often blanched, then dipped in salted ice water for a few seconds to set their colour.

Kitchen accidents with blades usually cut which part of the cook, says Britain's safety regulator?

The non-knife hand and its fingers take most of the cuts. For deboning, the regulator recommends a protective glove on that hand and a chainmail apron as well.

Superstition says a gifted knife will sever the friendship unless the recipient hands back what?

A coin turns the present into a purchase, so nothing has been given and nothing gets cut. A belief recorded in 1646 held that laying a knife across other cutlery was a sign of witchcraft.

Which knife did the US Congress restrict in 1958 amid press alarm over teenage delinquents?

The switchblade was painted by 1950s newspapers as the weapon of young delinquents, on mostly anecdotal evidence. The first bill in Congress, in 1954, began a worldwide wave of bans.

The Night of the Long Knives was Adolf Hitler's 1934 purge of which force led by Ernst Röhm?

The Brownshirts, formally the SA, had alarmed the German army because their chief wanted to merge the two under his own leadership. The killings ran from 30 June to 2 July.

The stiletto, a slender dagger with a needle-like point, was first developed in which country?

Italy supplied the name as well: stiletto comes from the Latin stilus, the pointed tool Romans used for writing on wax tablets. The blade was thin enough to slip through gaps in plate armour.

In Scottish Highland dress, the sgian-dubh knife is traditionally worn tucked into the top of what?

The stocking leaves the hilt on show, although the Gaelic name is usually read as black knife, with hidden as a secondary meaning.

Which knife do Inuit women traditionally use for jobs from skinning animals to cutting hair?

The ulu is sometimes even used to trim the blocks of snow for an igloo. Winners at the Arctic Winter Games receive medals in its shape in place of regular ones.

Which Arabian country's national emblem shows a sheathed khanjar dagger laid over two crossed swords?

Oman has flown the emblem in the corner of its flag since 1970, and Omani men still wear the curved khanjar as a ceremonial dagger on formal occasions.

Which African country's flag shows a machete crossed by half a cogwheel beneath a five-pointed star?

Angola chose the machete to stand for peasants, farming and the war of independence, while the cogwheel stands for workers and industry.

Which blade are initiated Khalsa Sikhs required to wear as one of the five articles of faith?

The kirpan was once a full-sized sword about 76 cm long, until British colonial laws of the nineteenth century cut it down. Guru Gobind Singh made wearing it a commandment in 1699.

Which novelist wrote the 2024 memoir Knife about surviving a stabbing on stage two years earlier?

Salman Rushdie was attacked at the Chautauqua Institution in 2022, more than thirty years after a fatwa was issued against him over his novel The Satanic Verses.

Which singer took Mack the Knife to number one in 1959 and won the Grammy for Record of the Year with it?

Bobby Darin was reluctant to release it as a single, and Dick Clark had warned him that a song from an opera would not suit a rock and roll audience. It became his only Hot 100 chart-topper.

The snap-off blade of the Olfa utility knife was inspired by the way which sectioned treat breaks apart?

A chocolate bar of the kind American soldiers carried after the war gave founder Yoshio Okada the idea, when the blades used to cut paper at a printing firm kept going dull.

Fairbairn and Sykes based their British commando dagger on ideas formed while policing which Chinese city?

Shanghai's Municipal Police employed both men before the war, and Wilkinson Sword made the first batch of just 50 knives in January 1941. The dagger went ashore with troops at Normandy.

Which German city, home to the knife makers Wüsthof and Zwilling, is nicknamed the City of Blades?

Solingen has long been renowned for swords, knives, scissors and razors. The founders of the US car maker Studebaker traced their line to bladesmen who left the region in 1736.

A bone-handled pocketknife about 2,500 years old was found at the Hallstatt site in which country?

Austria is home to Hallstatt, the site that lends its name to an early Iron Age culture, and the knife dates to around 600 to 500 BCE. Folding knives older than Roman rule have turned up in Spain too.

Which thick, heavy Japanese kitchen knife is designed to behead and fillet whole fish?

The deba is the thickest of all Japanese kitchen knives, sometimes a full centimetre thick, which lets it take the head off a fish without damage to the edge.

Which wooden-handled French folding knife, made in Savoie since 1890, was reputedly used by Picasso?

Opinel began as a simple peasant's knife, popular with local farmers and herdsmen. Its twisting safety lock, the Virobloc, was added in 1955 to hold the blade open.

Natural whetstones quarried in the Ouachita Mountains are sold under the name of which US state?

Arkansas stones are made of novaculite, a rock formed of quartz with very small crystals. The whet in whetstone is an old word for putting an edge on a blade, and has nothing to do with wet.

Which Javanese dagger, famous for its wavy blade, did UNESCO add to its intangible heritage list?

The kris gets its patterned surface from alternating layers of iron and nickel-bearing iron, and many examples are straight, not wavy.