shiv

• chib, chiv (Scotland, Geordie)
• shive

First attested 1915. From chive, chieve, chife, chiv (“knife”), from Romani chive, chiv, chivvomengro (“knife, dagger, blade”).[1][2][3][4][5]

• IPA^(key): /ʃɪv/

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪv

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

shiv (plural shivs)

1. A knife, especially a makeshift one fashioned from something not normally used as a weapon (like a plastic spoon or a toothbrush).

   Synonym: (slang) shank

   • 1971, Abbie Hoffman, “Introduction”, in Steal This Book, Pirate Editions / Grove Press:

     It's perhaps fitting that I write this introduction in jail—that graduate school of survival. Here you learn how to use toothpaste as glue, fashion a shiv out of a spoon and build intricate communication networks.

   • 2024 April 13, Jacob Bernstein, quoting Judith Regan, “When O.J. Simpson ‘Confessed’ to Murder”, in The New York Times‎:

     Mr. Simpson finished “If I Did It” with the help of a ghostwriter, but after a public outcry, the book was shelved, and the woman who had agreed to publish it lost her job. “Basically, I got the shiv,” Ms. Regan said in a phone interview this week.

2. A particular woody by-product of processing flax or hemp.

• shivvy

shiv (third-person singular simple present shivs, present participle shivving, simple past and past participle shivved)

1. To stab someone with a shiv.
   • 2016, Andrew Shaffer, The Day of the Donald, Crooked Lane Books, →ISBN, page 6:

     Anyway, that's how Jimmie came to be shivved and left to bleed out in the shower.

2. (by extension) To stab someone with anything not normally used as a stabbing weapon.

• shank (slang)

• IHVS, IHVs