Knives
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40 free Knives trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
A knife is the oldest tool in the kitchen drawer and one of the oldest tools anywhere, which is why it turns up in cookery classes, army kit lists, folklore and film titles alike. Knowing your way around one is a real skill: which blade suits which job, what a honing rod is actually for, and why chefs give French names to the way they slice a carrot. This quiz covers that practical know-how first: the types of kitchen knife, the parts of a blade, the classic cuts, and the basics of care and safe handling. The rest ranges wider, across famous folding and fighting knives, the cities and makers behind well-known brands, blades worn as part of national or religious dress, and knives in books, music and cinema. It suits culinary students revising knife skills, home cooks, collectors and pub quiz teams. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still teaches something.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who first used the English name Swiss Army knife after the Second World War, in place of Offiziersmesser?
American soldiers
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.
Q 02Which frontiersman, later killed at the Alamo, made a big fighting knife famous in the Sandbar Fight?
Jim Bowie
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.
Q 03What does a smooth honing steel do to a kitchen knife's edge, despite its nickname of sharpening steel?
Straightens it
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.
Q 04Which French cardinal reputedly had table knives blunted to stop guests picking their teeth?
Richelieu
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.
Q 05The curved kukri is the signature blade of which troops recruited into the British and Indian armies?
Gurkhas
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.
Q 06Which stone, set along Mesoamerican wooden swords, can be many times sharper than a steel scalpel?
Obsidian
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.
Q 07Which James Bond actor plays the detective Benoit Blanc in Rian Johnson's 2019 whodunnit Knives Out?
Daniel Craig
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.
Q 08Which classic French knife cut turns carrots or potatoes into long thin strips resembling matchsticks?
Julienne
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.
Q 09The penknife takes its name from its original job of thinning and pointing which writing tools?
Quills
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.
Q 10The butterfly knife, or balisong, has two swinging handles and is most closely tied to which Asian country?
Philippines
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.
Q 11Which short-bladed kitchen tool is ideal for peeling fruit, trimming garnishes and deveining prawns?
Paring knife
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.
Q 12Which serrated kitchen staple was patented in 1919 with angled grooves that cut without heavy downward pressure?
Bread knife
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.
Q 13Which Japanese all-purpose kitchen knife, created in the 1940s, has a name meaning three virtues?
Santoku
Q 21Kitchen accidents with blades usually cut which part of the cook, says Britain's safety regulator?
The non-knife hand
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.
Q 22Superstition says a gifted knife will sever the friendship unless the recipient hands back what?
A coin
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.
Q 23Which knife did the US Congress restrict in 1958 amid press alarm over teenage delinquents?
Switchblade
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.
Q 14On a knife, what name is given to the part of the blade that extends back into the handle?
Tang
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.
Q 15Which metal, making up at least 10.5 percent of the alloy, keeps a stainless steel knife from rusting?
Chromium
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.
Q 16Which gemstone, ground to dust, coats the wheels used to sharpen the very hard edge of a ceramic knife?
Diamond
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.
Q 17Which curved blade with a handle at each end is rocked back and forth to mince herbs and garlic?
Mezzaluna
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.
Q 18Which French technique stacks and rolls basil or spinach leaves, then slices them into ribbons?
Chiffonade
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.
Q 19What is the purpose of the small hole found in the top front corner of many meat cleavers?
Hanging it up
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.
Q 20Which French knife cut, the smallest dice of all, yields tiny cubes often used to garnish consommé?
Brunoise
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.
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.
Q 24The Night of the Long Knives was Adolf Hitler's 1934 purge of which force led by Ernst Röhm?
The Brownshirts
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.
Q 25The stiletto, a slender dagger with a needle-like point, was first developed in which country?
Italy
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.
Q 26In Scottish Highland dress, the sgian-dubh knife is traditionally worn tucked into the top of what?
The stocking
The stocking leaves the hilt on show, although the Gaelic name is usually read as black knife, with hidden as a secondary meaning.
Q 27Which knife do Inuit women traditionally use for jobs from skinning animals to cutting hair?
Ulu
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.
Q 28Which Arabian country's national emblem shows a sheathed khanjar dagger laid over two crossed swords?
Oman
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.
Q 29Which African country's flag shows a machete crossed by half a cogwheel beneath a five-pointed star?
Angola
Angola chose the machete to stand for peasants, farming and the war of independence, while the cogwheel stands for workers and industry.
Q 30Which blade are initiated Khalsa Sikhs required to wear as one of the five articles of faith?
Kirpan
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.