jackknife

Other forms of jackknife

plural

jackknives

past tense

jackknifed·

present participle

jackknifing·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about jackknife

What does jackknife mean?

jackknife means "a large knife with one or more folding blades". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in jackknife?

jackknife has 2 syllables and divides as jackk-nife under the regular spelling rules. It is not in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, so that comes from how the word is written rather than from a recorded pronunciation, and no stress or phonetic transcription is claimed for it.

What is another word for jackknife?

Close synonyms include clasp knife. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is jackknife a common word?

jackknife is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.