shiv

1 of 2

noun

ˈshiv 

plural shivs

slang

: a small usually improvised pointed or bladed weapon

With nothing but time on their hands, the prisoners craft weapons from available resources: shivs are made from toothbrushes or pieces of metal bunks.

—Newsweek

Some created makeshift weapons by fashioning "shivs" out of sharpened spoons and toothbrushes …

—Kristian Silva

The guards were … attacked with a makeshift weapon—a so-called shiv, fashioned from razor blades and a toothbrush …

—The Irish Examiner

… remove the staple from a magazine, straighten it, mount it in a juice straw …, you got yourself a neat little shiv …

—Kent H. Dixon

—sometimes used figuratively

… gave an artful lesson in how to stick a shiv into a sitting president without ever raising his voice or making a specific accusation.

—Walter Shapiro

shiv

2 of 2

verb

shivved also shived; shivving also shiving; shivs

transitive verb

informal

: to stab or cut (someone) with a shiv (see shiv entry 1)

shivved him in the back

—often used figuratively

Any signs of dissent will result in his personally shivving the offender politically …

—Hayes Brown

Synonyms

Noun

• blade
• cutter
• knife
• shank [slang]

Examples of shiv in a Sentence

Noun

watch yourself in Cell Block 8, or you'll end up with a shiv in your back

Recent Examples on the Web

Noun

For those of you uneducated about Star War Legos, in layman terms this means I was stabbed by a collection of Legos shaped like a prison shiv. —Sherry Kuehl, Kansas City Star, 21 Feb. 2024

When the dust settles, Torres looks down to see a shiv sticking out of his side. —EW.com, 12 Feb. 2024

Verb

After all, one of its tech-bro founders, Alex Mather, smugly told the New York Times in 2017 that the site’s goal was essentially to shiv every newspaper sports section around the country. —Globe Staff, BostonGlobe.com, 8 Jan. 2022

Dodge the rules, skirt the law, shiv your business partner, abandon your friends: Chafkin argues that the Silicon Valley edition of this playbook was written at PayPal. —Anna Wiener, The New Yorker, 27 Oct. 2021

Word History

Etymology

Noun

alteration of chiv, of unknown origin

First Known Use

Noun

1897, in the meaning defined above

Verb

1926, in the meaning defined above