# Why does knife start with a 'k'? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 3, 2011, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-knife-start-with-a-k/584150 "2011-06-03T00:26:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![hoobyjuice](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b782af/32.png) [@hoobyjuice](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hoobyjuice)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-knife-start-with-a-k/584150/1 "2011-06-03T00:26:21Z")
So, um, yeah, why does knife start with a ‘k’? I don’t buy that explanation that its from the french word ‘canif’. The english isle predecessors surely must have come up with their own word for sharp pointy cutting things before there was such a thing as ‘french’. ---
**Author:** ![x-ray\_vision](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/x-ray_vision/32/351_2.png) [@x-ray\_vision](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/x-ray_vision)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-knife-start-with-a-k/584150/2 "2011-06-03T00:29:34Z")
Origin: before 1100; Middle English knif, Old English cnīf; cognate with Dutch knijf, German Kneif, Old Norse knīfr > **[Knife Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/knife)** > > Knife definition, an instrument for cutting, consisting essentially of a thin, sharp-edged, metal blade fitted with a handle. See more. You don’t have to buy it if you don’t want to, but that’s the answer. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-knife-start-with-a-k/584150/3 "2011-06-03T00:29:46Z")
Was it pronounced “ka nife” in the past? I think knight was pronounced “ka nicked” in the past. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-knife-start-with-a-k/584150/4 "2011-06-03T00:30:31Z")
Yes, and the English islanders also had their own word for swine-meat before “pork”, and their own word for mounted warriors before “cavalry”, and a bunch of other words that have since been replaced by French. ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-knife-start-with-a-k/584150/5 "2011-06-03T00:54:30Z")
> [@Mahaloth](#): > > Was it pronounced “ka nife” in the past? I think knight was pronounced “ka nicked” in the past. Yup. All the Anglo-Saxon word with silent kn- at the beginning used to have both consonants pronounced. Same thing with the -gh- in _night, knight, through_ and such – the -gh- used to be pronounced, just like their German reflexes _Nacht, Knecht_, and _durch_. ---
**Author:** ![Markxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-knife-start-with-a-k/584150/6 "2011-06-03T01:01:28Z")
Eye dew knot no ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-knife-start-with-a-k/584150/7 "2011-06-03T01:09:11Z")
Why knot? ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-knife-start-with-a-k/584150/8 "2011-06-03T01:43:42Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > Why knot? [Crabs](http://www.wyeknotcrabs.com/index.htm), that’s why not. (Remember to practice safe sex, now.) ---
**Author:** ![hoobyjuice](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b782af/32.png) [@hoobyjuice](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hoobyjuice)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-knife-start-with-a-k/584150/9 "2011-06-03T03:35:34Z")
so wait, where did the old english cnif come from? are you guys saying cnif was french and overtook whatever the original old old english word for cnif was? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-knife-start-with-a-k/584150/10 "2011-06-03T03:50:15Z")
> [@matt\_mcl](#): > > All the Anglo-Saxon word with silent kn- at the beginning used to have both consonants pronounced. Same thing with the -gh- in _night, knight, through_ and such – the -gh- used to be pronounced, just like their German reflexes _Nacht, Knecht_, and _durch_. One of the subtle jokes in _Monty Python and the Holy Grail_ is when the French soldier refers to Arthur and his friends as “silly English ka-niggits”. What he says is actually a close approximation of the original pronunciation. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-knife-start-with-a-k/584150/11 "2011-06-03T03:56:48Z")
> [@hoobyjuice](#): > > so wait, where did the old english cnif come from? > > are you guys saying cnif was french and overtook whatever the original old old english word for cnif was? No. Cnif was the old english word and it arose from the same source language as the dutch knijf, german kneif, and old norse knīfr. It’s not french at all. The french word for knife is couteau and is from the latin word cultellus. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-knife-start-with-a-k/584150/12 "2011-06-03T07:21:15Z")
If you ask ‘where does that come from’ enough when dealing with either French or German\*, you eventually get back to Proto-Indo-European, which is the hypothetical reconstructed language for most (but not all) languages spoken in Europe, and a good number of them spoken in a swath that runs east of Europe all the way down into India. \*(German, here, is a broad family including what you’d think of as German and Dutch, plus all languages derived from Old Norse (Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic, and some others) and some extinct languages such as Gothic. English is German by this meaning.) ‘Reconstructed’ means we have no written records of it; everything we think we know about it comes from comparative linguistics, which means we’ve compared a lot of languages to work out a hypothetical family tree for them and worked backwards to this one single language which is the ancestor of a great many of them. (Incidentally, this is why Proto-Indo-European words are spelled with an asterisk (\*) in front of them: It serves no phonetic role, it merely marks the word as a reconstruction.) Both French and German share a common ancestor in Proto-Indo-European; going back farther than that takes you into territory where there is much less agreement among scholars. (One European language not derived from Proto-Indo-European is Basque; we have no idea where Basque came from, or how it’s related to anything else. It’s a linguistic isolate.) ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 7:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-knife-start-with-a-k/584150/13 "2011-06-03T07:54:32Z")
> [@The\_Hamster\_King](#): > > One of the subtle jokes in _Monty Python and the Holy Grail_ is when the French soldier refers to Arthur and his friends as “silly English ka-niggits”. What he says is actually a close approximation of the original pronunciation. Not that close, really, given that the original pronunciation (something like /knixt/, rather than /k@nIg@t/) didn’t have three vowels, just one (the one after /n/), and that vowel was the same one as we use in “neat”, not the one we use in “nit”. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 8:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-knife-start-with-a-k/584150/14 "2011-06-03T08:46:05Z")
In the scandinavian languages we still pronounce the kn as it should be pronounced. (Remember king Canute? (Danish: Knut)) Try translating “knot, knife, knave” into Norwegian in google translate and then press “listen”. ---
**Author:** ![Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hypnagogic_jerk/32/4252_2.png) [@Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypnagogic_Jerk)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 9:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-knife-start-with-a-k/584150/15 "2011-06-03T09:14:52Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > No. Cnif was the old english word and it arose from the same source language as the dutch knijf, german kneif, and old norse knīfr. It’s not french at all. The french word for knife is couteau and is from the latin word cultellus. Although “canif” is a French word, meaning a small knife. (Swiss army knives are usually known as “canifs” in French, for example.) Looking at [its etymology](http://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/canif) (bottom of the page), it seems that it is a word of Germanic origin, and a cognate of “knife”. (I think the abbreviations “a. b. frq.” and “a. nord.” in that paragraph refer respectively to Old Lower Frankish and Old Norse. As for “ags.” I have no idea.) ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 9:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-knife-start-with-a-k/584150/16 "2011-06-03T09:18:22Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > No. Cnif was the old english word and it arose from the same source language as the dutch knijf, german kneif, and old norse knīfr. It’s not french at all. The french word for knife is couteau and is from the latin word cultellus. The French word for pocket knife is _canif_. (Not that this changes the story of its origin) ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-knife-start-with-a-k/584150/17 "2011-06-03T15:10:02Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > The French word for pocket knife is _canif_. (Not that this changes the story of its origin) I’m pretty sure we got that word the same way the English got knife: by borrowing it from the Norse and/or Franks, who spoke Germanic languages before they settled down and started mingling with the local Gallo-Romans and adopting their hodge-podge languages and dialects. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-knife-start-with-a-k/584150/18 "2011-06-03T15:50:58Z")
I don’t know. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-knife-start-with-a-k/584150/19 "2011-06-03T15:55:01Z")
Right. We’re so used to the idea of English words that have French origins that we forget that it sometimes worked the other way too. ---
**Author:** ![notquitekarpov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/71c47a/32.png) [@notquitekarpov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/notquitekarpov)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-knife-start-with-a-k/584150/20 "2011-06-03T16:04:09Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > The french word for knife is couteau and is from the latin word cultellus. Hence the word cutless for a pirates sword I guess. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-knife-start-with-a-k/584150.md?page=2)