or chiv, subs. (thieves’).—1. A knife. [The Gypsy has CHIVE, to stab.]
ENGLISH SYNONYMS. Arkansas toothpick (a bowie knife); cabbage-bleeder; whittle; gully; jocteleg (a clasp knife: a corruption of Jacques de Liége); snickersnee (nautical); cuttle; cuttle-bung; pig-sticker.
FRENCH SYNONYMS. Un bince (thieves’); un coupe-lard (popular: literary ‘a bacon slicer,’ lard being used as the English ‘bacon’ for the human body); un coupe-sifflet (thieves’: couper le sifflet à quelqu’un = ‘to cut any one’s throat’); un lingre or lingue (thieves’: from Langres, a manufacturing town); un trente-deux or un vingt-deux (thieves’: originally terms used by Dutch and Flemish thieves’); un chourin or surin (thieves’: possibly from the Gypsy churi, ‘a knife’); un pliant (thieves’); une petite flambe (thieves’: also a sword, said by Michel to be derived from Flamberge, the name of the sword of Renaud de Montauban. Mettre flamberge au vent = ‘to draw’).
GERMAN SYNONYMS. Hechtling; Kaut (possibly connected with the English ‘cut’); Mandel or Mandle: (Viennese thieves’: in the Gaunersprache = ‘a man,’ especially a little one); Sackin, Sackem, Sackum, Zackin, Zacken (from the Hebrew sochan); Schorin or Schorie (from the Gypsy churi, which in Hanover appears as Czuri).
ITALIAN SYNONYM. Baccheto.
PORTUGUESE SYNONYM. Sarda.
1674. R. HEAD, Canting Academy, 12. He takes his CHIVE and cuts us down.
1714. Memoirs of John Hall (4 ed.), p. 11. CHIEVE, knife.
1785. GROSE, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, s.v.
1828. BADCOCK (‘Jon Bee’), Living Picture of London, p. 26. Some of these accomplices also carry a CHIV, or knife.
1837. B. DISRAELI, Venetia, ch. xiv. ‘Berwnu,’ he shouted, ‘gibela CHIV for the gentry cove.’
1879. J. W. HORSLEY, ‘Autobiography of a Thief,’ in Macmillan’s Magazine, XL., 503. So we had a fight, and he put the CHIVE (knife) into me.
2. See CHIVEY.
Verb.—To stab; to ‘knife.’
1725. A New Canting Dictionary To CHIVE his Darbies: to saw asunder his Irons.
1819. J. H. VAUX, A Vocabulary of the Flash Language, s.v. To CHIV a person is to stab or cut him with a knife.
1868. Cassell’s Magazine, May, p. 80. He [a bushranger] was as good a man as Jacky at any weapon that could be named, and if Jacky were game for a CHIVING (stabbing) match, he (Kavanagh) was ready for him.
1879. J. W. HORSLEY, ‘Autobiography of a Thief,’ in Macmillan’s Magazine, XL., 503. After the place got well where I was CHIVED.
