What's the difference between knife and penknife?

Knife


Definition:

  • (n.) An instrument consisting of a thin blade, usually of steel and having a sharp edge for cutting, fastened to a handle, but of many different forms and names for different uses; as, table knife, drawing knife, putty knife, pallet knife, pocketknife, penknife, chopping knife, etc..
  • (n.) A sword or dagger.
  • (v. t.) To prune with the knife.
  • (v. t.) To cut or stab with a knife.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "I pulled the microphone in front of my seat, not a knife.
  • (2) Leicester looked a little sorry for themselves and, with their concentration down, United twisted the knife.
  • (3) Frontal afferents to the medial basal hypothalamus of the rat were interrupted by a Halász knife, and 4 weeks later the brains were processed for immunostaining of CRF-fibers.
  • (4) Earlier this year the Guardian launched Beyond the Blade , a long-term project looking at young people who are victims of knife crime.
  • (5) When we reached our summit, or whatever spot was deemed by my father to be of adequately punishing distance from the car to deserve lunch, Dad would invariably find he had forgotten his Swiss army knife (looking back, I begin to doubt he ever had one) and instead would cut cheese into slices with the edge of his credit card.
  • (6) More conservative approaches have been used in young women requesting preservation of their childbearing ability, including CO2 laser excision, knife excision, cryotherapy, and electrocauterization.
  • (7) One day, a man she had interviewed held a knife to her throat, holding her captive for 10 days and only releasing her when the French embassy came looking for her.
  • (8) In the wake of a second fatal police shooting in the St Louis area after the death of Michael Brown , concerned citizens are asking why officers had to kill Kajieme Powell, a 25-year-old man who was holding a knife and “behaving erratically.” They want to know why officers don’t shoot someone like Powell in the leg or the arm, rather than aiming for vital organs, or why they don’t just use a less lethal weapon, like a Taser.
  • (9) At home, he’s besieged by leadership speculation of sufficient intensity to see his conservative allies resort to public verbal knife-fights.
  • (10) When it's serving time, use a good serrated knife to saw cleanly through the rhubarb.
  • (11) I don’t remember what happened afterward.” By morning, Israeli newspapers had published the official version of Anas al-Atrash’s death: A 23-year-old Palestinian had run from his car and rushed at a checkpoint soldier with a knife.
  • (12) A disproportionate number of those who are victims and perpetrators of knife crime are African-Caribbean.
  • (13) It also said that night that the suspect had been unarmed — an assertion that was revealed to be false the next day when officials acknowledged Gonzalez had a knife with him when he was apprehended.
  • (14) Hogan-Howe waded into the row, saying gang members heard simple messages such as that there was a minimum five-year jail sentence for possession of a gun, but had no idea about the equivalent sentence for carrying a knife.
  • (15) With it sank my suitcase of clothes and my striped prisoner uniform, including my hat, coat, shirt and a knife.
  • (16) Albeit an unloveable, slightly scary Ron Burgundy in a 'I may now be a low level Tesco manager in a cheap suit but I still remember how to handle a stanley knife' kind of way," reckons Robert Lowery, who is forgetting that Jim White has a phone.
  • (17) He didn't even mind the National Front turning up and sieg-heiling during gigs, which seems enormously sporting of him, given his raft of horrifying stories about experiencing racism in 60s and 70s Britain, and the scars he still bears as the result of a racially motivated 1980 knife attack.
  • (18) Lysine vasopressin and a long-acting analogue N alpha-triglycyl-lysine vasopressin were compared in a prospective randomized double-blind study including 71 women undergoing cold knife conization of the uterine cervix.
  • (19) There was a 24% rise in knife crime in London in the 12 months ending in March.
  • (20) Once, the inquest heard, he threatened Luke’s football coach, telling him: “I have a knife with your name on it.” When Anderson killed Luke there were four warrants out for his arrest including one related to his possession of child sex abuse images.

Penknife


Definition:

  • (n.) A small pocketknife; formerly, a knife used for making and mending quill pens.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) During one alleged sexual assault, he is said to have claimed, Proctor was persuaded not to cut off Nick’s genitals with a penknife only by the intervention of Heath, who was said by the witness to have been present during the sex attack at a large townhouse in London.
  • (2) It is not giving much away to say that the film builds to a graphic self-amputation, one that employs not only the rusty penknife blade but also a fair few of the knife's other attachments (the dinky little scissors, for example, with which the desperate Ralston, played with great intensity and lightness by James Franco, goes to work on a stubborn piano-wire of a tendon.)
  • (3) A directed history and examination revealed that the patient was stabbed in the back with a penknife while leaving a bus and stepped down onto a paralyzed leg, which collapsed beneath him.
  • (4) On another occasion, Proctor is also accused in the same venue of producing a penknife and threatened to cut Nick’s genitals.
  • (5) Whenever I go to the houses of parliament these days, I make sure that I leave my penknife behind, because it is bound to be seized by the security people.
  • (6) "This is a minimum of six months in prison for simply having a knife, potentially even a penknife, in your pocket.
  • (7) All he had with him was a rope, a video camera, a bottle of water and, crucially, a blunt penknife.
  • (8) Perhaps most crucially, after the first alleged rape, Sherwood said she began carrying a penknife and that she almost certainly cut the attacker during the second attack.
  • (9) Take up an extreme sport and, at best, you'll have to cut off your own hand with a penknife.
  • (10) During one alleged sexual assault, he is said to have claimed, Proctor was persuaded not to attack Nick’s genitals with a penknife only by the intervention of Heath, who was said by the witness to have been present during the sex attack at a large townhouse in London .
  • (11) The strange thing is, he says, Linda was even angrier with Steve (as a little girl she had tried to stab him with her penknife) but she dealt with the situation better.
  • (12) Does Boyle believe that everyone would react as Ralston did, with the blunt penknife, in that situation?
  • (13) This is a minimum of six months in prison for simply having a knife, potentially even a penknife, in your pocket – not, as I've read in some press reports , for a number of offences involving a knife.
  • (14) "Hogan-Howe is saying that if you go out of your house with a penknife and you have a previous knife-related offence, under this arrangement put forward by the Conservatives that person would go to prison.

Words possibly related to "penknife"