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''shiv'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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''shiv'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260125123911-00-⌔

shiv - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Noun

shiv (countable and uncountable, plural shivs)

  • (slang, countable) 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
    • ✤ 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.1
    • ✤ 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
  • (uncountable) A particular woody by-product of processing flax or hemp.

Verb

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

  • (transitive, slang) To stab (someone) with a shiv.
    • ✤ Synonyms: jab, (slang) shank; see also Thesaurus: stab
    • ✤ Anyway, that’s how Jimmie came to be shivved and left to bleed out in the shower.3
  • (transitive, slang, by extension) To stab (someone) with anything not normally used as a stabbing weapon.

Etymology

First attested 1915. From chive, chieve, chife, chiv (“knife”), from Romani chive, chiv, chivvomengro (“knife, dagger, blade”).45678

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /ʃɪv/
  • Audio (Australian): 🔊
  • Rhymes: -ɪv
  • Audio (Southern England): 🔊

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

  1. 1971, Abbie Hoffman, “Introduction”, in Steal This Book, Pirate Editions/Grove Press: ↩

  2. 2024 April 13, Jacob Bernstein, quoting Judith Regan, “When O.J. Simpson ‘Confessed’ to Murder”, in The New York Times ‎: ↩

  3. 2016, Andrew Shaffer, The Day of the Donald, Crooked Lane Books, →ISBN, page 6: ↩

  4. Douglas Harper (2001–2026), “shiv”, in Online Etymology Dictionary, retrieved 6 July 2017: ““a razor,” 1915, variant of chive, thieves’ cant word for “knife” (1670s), of unknown origin.” ↩

  5. “shiv”, in Merriam-Webster.com Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present: “Alteration of chiv, of unknown origin. First known use: 1915” ↩

  6. “shiv”, in Collins English Dictionary, accessed 6 July 2017; from Michael Agnes, editor, Webster’s New World College Dictionary, 4th edition, Cleveland, Oh.: Wiley, 2010, →ISBN: “Word origin of ‘shiv’: earlier chiv, prob. < Romany chiv, blade” ↩

  7. “shiv”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022. “Probably from Romany chiv ‘blade’.” ↩

  8. “shiv n.”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang, Jonathon Green, 2016–present. ↩

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Secondary

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