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Jackknife   Listen
noun
Jackknife  n.  A large, strong clasp knife for the pocket; a pocket knife.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Jackknife" Quotes from Famous Books



... be a jackknife in it, or something besides the dollar. He cut the stout twine, removed the wrapper, and lifted the cover of a strong paper box. There was something wrapped in neat white paper and ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... sandy-haired man said, before anybody could answer. He set his drink on the stand-tray and took a big jackknife out of his pocket, holding it unopened in his hand. "How's this sound?" he asked, and hit the edge of the tray with the back of ...
— Crossroads of Destiny • Henry Beam Piper

... holding above her head.... Pathos, resignation and a sort of recreating FAITH are painted against that threatening wall and overhanging dirt.... If that should fall WE ARE ALL BOUND TO SUFFOCATE before any help can come.... My 'prisoner' is not a bit discouraged, however.... He is using his jackknife against the concrete wall with great patience and whistling softly and slowly an air from 'The Blessing of the Waters.'... WATER!... I know those girls are CHOKING for a drink as I have been for the last ten hours myself.... Still, ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe

... was provided with a knife—a good, strong jackknife—but, for all the good it was likely to do him, it might as well have been at home. His hands being tied, of course, he could not get the knife out of his pocket; and, even if he had done so, how could he ...
— The Tin Box - and What it Contained • Horatio Alger

... kicked Juan awake and after the garage jack, and himself wheeled out his four great pneumatic tires, and with his jackknife slit the wound paper covering, and wondered what it was that smelled so unpleasant. A goat bleated plaintively to remind him of their presence. Another goat carried on the theme, and the chorus swelled quaveringly and held to certain minor notes. ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower

... old days, before the destruction of the white pines removed the chief source of American inventiveness—the universal habit of whittling—every boy had a jackknife, and also had boxes, sometimes of wood, sometimes of writing paper, in which he kept flies. Now he has ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various

... says he. "Asked me if I didn't want my fingers manicured; and, by jinks! I let her do it, just to see what it was like. Never felt so blamed foolish in my life! Look at them fingernails, will you? Been parin' 'em with a jackknife for fifty-seven years; and she soaks 'em out in a bowl of perfumery, jabs under 'em with a little stick wrapped in cotton, cuts off all the hang nails, files 'em round at the ends, and polishes 'em up so they shine as if they were varnished! ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... by this time. He had a great jackknife, the pride of his heart, in his breeches pocket. It could do good service now. They bared the bedstead in a moment. It was laced backward and forward with ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge

... Maudina and her dad, and me and Cap'n Jonadab was smoking on the front piazza. I was pulling at a pipe, but the cap'n had the home end of one of Stumpton's cigars harpooned on the little blade of his jackknife, and was busy pumping the last drop of comfort out of it. I never see a man who wanted to get his money's wuth more'n Jonadab, I give you my word, I expected to see him swaller that cigar ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln

... iron made in blast furnaces is turned into steel. Steel has been made for centuries, but until a few years ago the process was slow and costly. A workman's steel tools were treasures, and a good jackknife was a valuable article. Railroads were using iron rails. They soon wore out, but at the suggestion to use steel, the presidents of the roads would have exclaimed, "Steel, indeed! We might as well use silver!" Trains needed to be longer and heavier, ...
— Diggers in the Earth • Eva March Tappan

... was an oar and a jackknife. Upon this oar I spent much time, carving minute letters and cutting a notch for each week that passed. There were many notches. I sharpened the knife on a flat piece of rock, and no barber was ever more ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... strange woodshed, and given a piece of burlap. Jane did not fare much better. There was not an extra bed in the building, barring a five-foot crib in the hospital room. She, as you know, approaches six. We tucked her in, and she spent the night folded up like a jackknife. She has limped about today, looking like a decrepit letter S, openly deploring this latest escapade on the part of her flighty mistress, and longing for the time when we shall come to our senses, and return to the parental ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster

... times. She can soften the occasional expression of half-concealed ridicule with which the poor old fellow's sallies are liable to be welcomed—or unwelcomed. She knows that the edge of a broken teacup may be sharper, very possibly, than that of a philosopher's jackknife. A mind a little off its balance, one which has a slightly squinting brain as its organ; will often prove fertile in suggestions. Vulgar, cynical, contemptuous listeners fly at all its weaknesses, and please themselves ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... the buildings would be worse than the first. I do not believe one word of it. It is inferred that they would deface, because they deface now. But what is it that they deface? Deformity. And who blames them? You see a rough board, and, by natural instinct, you dive into it with your jackknife. A base bare wall is a standing invitation to energetic and unruly pencils. Give the boys a little elegance and the tutors a little tact, and I do not believe there would be any trouble. If I had a thousand dollars,—as I did have once, but it is gone: shall I ever look upon its like again?—I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... once in his buckskins on a particularly soft piece of turf, and in an incredibly brief space of time he was sound asleep. Jim Hart, doubling up his long, thin figure like a jackknife, imitated him, and Paul was not long in following them to slumberland. Only Henry and Ross remained awake and watchful, and by and by the moonlight came out and silvered their ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler

... reckon—but I jest wanted to—well, I wanted to give you this." He dove down into his overalls' pocket and brought up a nugget, worn smooth by long milling around between his spare change and his jackknife. ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge

... gave me plenty of time to cut it out. I neglected some purposely to see how long it would take the blight to girdle a limb and some of the larger limbs took two years. In all of the limbs that were affected, in the hazels which I wished to save, I simply cut out the blight with a sharp jackknife, painted the spot with a little paint, an antiseptic or something of the sort, and had complete control. In fact I found that I needed to go over my hazel bushes not more than once a year to look after the blight, and in one day, or part of a day, with a sharp jackknife ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various

... ran across a sailor who had made a trip in the ship before the name was changed, and he told me a queer thing. He said he had found a rough map cut out on the wood of the forecastle with a jackknife. There were wavy lines to represent the water and a shaded part that might stand for a beach. Then there was a clump of three trees standing together, and a little way off were two more. One big rock rose out of the water on the ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport

... at home to get ready for your camping trip will add to your pleasure when you get out in the woods. If any part of your kit needs fixing, fishing rods wound or varnished, your jackknife ground, your camera fixed, or if your clothing needs any patches or ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller

... holster, he would be a dead man before he could press a trigger. And that time, he felt equally sure, would come sooner or later. His muscles were growing cramped. He could not forever double himself up like a four-bladed jackknife behind the altogether ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood

... none the worse at all," said Mr. Hand, recalling himself. "He said he wanted to come and see you, William. He was anxious to give you a kiss; and he's got a lot of pebbles and his favorite jackknife stowed away in a little box, to give you when he sees you!" And Mr. Hand laughed genially. He was prepared to talk all night on ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts

... pockets. And probably that was the first time he had ever found himself without plenty of string. There were enough other things in his pockets—a jackknife and nails, an apple and a lump of maple sugar, an old broken watch and a willow whistle. But not a single piece of string could ...
— The Tale of Sandy Chipmunk • Arthur Scott Bailey

... by Mr. Beach, dated Sunday. I am not a little pleased that you have the doctor (Bellamy) so completely under your thumb. Last Saturday I went a crabbing. Being in want of a thole-pin, I substituted a large jackknife in its stead, with the blade open and sticking up. It answered the purpose of rowing very well; but it seems that was not the only purpose it had to answer; for, after we had been some time on the flats, running ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... swung offside from Jeb, dexterously pulling a jackknife from his trousers-pocket, opening it, and thrusting it in the high top of his right boot. Then he kneeled in the road with uplifted face ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox

... a pair of skates the way they looked to me back then, Before I'd turned from boyhood's gates and marched into the world of men; I'd like to see a jackknife, too, with those same eager, dancing eyes That couldn't fault or blemish view; I'd like to feel the same surprise, The pleasure, free from all alloy, that has forever passed away, When I was just a little boy and had my faith ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest

... that he had no saw. He had a jackknife, however, and this was of some use to him, particularly in extricating the nails. It was slow work, but he had all day ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger

... dark, then roll under. Fortunately it was summer, but it was useless for people in this condition to go bare to the prairie farm. To make land yield, you must have house and barns and stock and implements, and I doubt if these people had as much as a jackknife. I remember how two or three of the older women used to sit crying each night in despair till they disappeared in the crowded house, fourteen or {xiii} twenty of them to a room. Within a week, the men were ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... boy broke out, suddenly. "I've seen you before. You're the man who found the hidden jackknife, ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells

... had gathered about the bed on which the old clergyman sat. Withers was scraping his long horny nails with a huge jackknife. ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... out his jackknife and probed with the largest blade. Clearly, there was nothing in the basin but ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin

... off the yard," and unjustly berated him as a "lubber," while the poor fellow was tugging away, and working with might and main, to disengage his tail from the lift, in which he at length succeeded, but not without the aid of his jackknife. ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... create the switchboard, who has been its devotee for more than thirty years, is a certain modest and little known inventor, still alive and busy, named Charles E. Scribner. Of the nine thousand switchboard patents, Scribner holds six hundred or more. Ever since 1878, when he devised the first "jackknife switch," Scribner has been the wizard of the switchboard. It was he who saw most clearly its requirements. Hundreds of others have helped, but Scribner was the one man who persevered, who never asked for an easier job, and who in the end became ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson

... moccasins out of our discarded overalls. We had neither scissors, needles, nor thread, but our experience had taught us that in all circumstances we must make what we did have serve our purpose. Our jackknife cut out our moccasins, and it also made a small stick into an implement that could punch holes, while some pieces of cord that we happened to have did fine in place of thread. It took quite a while to get our moccasins made, working with poor tools, and they were fancy-looking articles when we at ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien

... spent two days here, during which time I frequently visited my patient. It also gave us opportunity to bandage our own fortunately light wounds and to secure a little rest; though unfortunately I had nothing but a jackknife with which to dig the bullet out of my left calf and the shoemaker's accessories from my right ankle. Inquiring from the brigands about the caravan roads, we soon made our way out to one of the main routes and had the good fortune to meet ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski

... called him "father": he was always "Louis"—simply one of them. He married the family and they married him. He had captured their hearts in France by his story-telling, his flute-playing and his skilful talent with the jackknife. Now he was with them for all time, and he was theirs. It was the most natural thing ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard



Words linked to "Jackknife" :   dive, pocket knife, diving, pocketknife, jackknife clam



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