{"id":18519,"date":"2019-11-22T16:58:10","date_gmt":"2019-11-22T16:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=18519"},"modified":"2019-11-22T16:58:10","modified_gmt":"2019-11-22T16:58:10","slug":"knives-and-cutlasses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=18519","title":{"rendered":"Knives and Cutlasses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/images\/blog\/knife.gif\" style=\"float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;\" alt=\"Canif\" width=\"208\" height=\"208\"><\/p>\n<p>Yesterday I discovered that the French word for penknife is <strong>canif<\/strong> [ka.nif], which was borrowed from the Middle English <em>knif \/ knyf<\/em> [kni\u02d0f] (knife, dagger) [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/canif\">source<\/a>]. The English word <strong>knife<\/strong> comes from the same root.<\/p>\n<p><em>Knif<\/em> comes from the Old English <em>cn\u012bf<\/em> [kni\u02d0f] (knife), which was possibly borrowed or influenced by the Old Norse <em>kn\u00edfr<\/em> (knife), which comes from the Proto-Germanic <em>*kn\u012bbaz<\/em> [\u02c8kni\u02d0.\u03b2\u0251z] (pincers, shears, knife), from the Proto-Indo-European <em>*gneyb\u02b0-<\/em> (to pinch, nip), from <em>*gen-<\/em> (to pinch, squeeze, bend, press) [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic\/kn%C4%ABbaz\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p><em>Cn\u012bf<\/em> was first used in writing in the 11th century. Before then, <em>seax<\/em> [s\u00e6\u0251\u032fks] was the word for a knife or dagger, which is related to the word <strong>Saxon<\/strong> [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/seax#Old_English\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>The French word for knife is <strong>couteau<\/strong> [ku.to], which comes from the Old French <em>coutel<\/em>, from the Latin <em>cultellus<\/em> (small knife, dagger), a diminutive of <em>culter<\/em> [\u02c8kul.ter] (knife, razor) [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/couteau\">source<\/a>], which is also the root of words for knife in Romance languages, the English words <strong>cutlass<\/strong> and <strong>cutlery<\/strong>, and the Welsh word <em>cyllell<\/em> [\u02c8k\u0259\u026c\u025b\u026c].<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday I discovered that the French word for penknife is canif [ka.nif], which was borrowed from the Middle English knif \/ knyf [kni\u02d0f] (knife, dagger) [source]. The English word knife comes from the same root. Knif comes from the Old English cn\u012bf [kni\u02d0f] (knife), which was possibly borrowed or influenced by the Old Norse kn\u00edfr [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,111,10,15,26,33,34,36,44,45,77,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-french","category-language","category-latin","category-middle-english","category-old-english-aenglisc","category-old-french","category-old-norse","category-proto-germanic","category-proto-indo-european","category-welsh","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18519"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18532,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18519\/revisions\/18532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}