Clasp-knife
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A knife with a hinged blade or blades that, for safety when not in use, can be folded into a slot in the handle.
"...there is yet ample evidence of the existence of clasp-knives ages before the production of the Canterbury Tales. Among Etruscan antiquities in the Bronze Room of the British Museum are several clasp-knives, some of them with bone, others with bronze hafts, their blades being of iron — a metal employed for cutting implements by the Tyrrhenian tribes, at a far remote era. A scalprum or penknife has been found in Rome, the blade shutting into a bone haft, which is carved to represent the upper half of a human body; and clasp-knives, with iconic handles of the Roman era, have been discovered both in France and this country."
Synonyms
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More examples"...there is yet ample evidence of the existence of clasp-knives ages before the production of the Canterbury Tales. Among Etruscan antiquities in the Bronze Room of the British Museum are several clasp-knives, some of them with bone, others with bronze hafts, their blades being of iron — a metal employed for cutting implements by the Tyrrhenian tribes, at a far remote era. A scalprum or penknife has been found in Rome, the blade shutting into a bone haft, which is carved to represent the upper half of a human body; and clasp-knives, with iconic handles of the Roman era, have been discovered both in France and this country."
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.