What does "pocketknife" mean?

A knife small enough for carrying safely and handily in a pocket; usually a folding knife (with blades or tools that the user can fold or retract into the handle).

What is a synonym for "pocketknife"?

Common synonyms include: folding knife, jack-knife, penknife, pocket knife.

Pocketknife

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1
A knife small enough for carrying safely and handily in a pocket; usually a folding knife (with blades or tools that the user can fold or retract into the handle).
"Jimmy had a pocketknife, and he wandered into the drawing-room with it one day, alone, and reduced ten thousand dollars' worth of furniture to an indeterminable value in rather less than three-quarters of an hour."
2
a knife with a blade that folds into the handle; suitable for carrying in the pocket wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

folding knife jack-knife penknife pocket knife

Example

More examples

"The knife was so dull that I couldn't cut the meat with it and I had to use my pocketknife."

Etymology

From pocket + knife.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.