Word.ws English Dictionary

knifeplay

/ˈnaɪf(ˌ)pleɪ/

knifeplay noun: the act of fighting or cutting with a knife.

Noun

knifeplay (uncountable)

  1. The act of fighting or cutting with a knife.
    • Reinhart had finished his neat knifeplay, having transformed a half-pound of slab bacon into an accumulation of little strips measuring half an inch by an inch and a half.1981, Thomas Berger, Reinhart's Women, Open Road, published 2013, →ISBN
    • "Can't either of you think? If we have to fight I want you to blary win. For that you need training and practice. Swordplay, knifeplay, bare-knuckle, staves. Archery. Trickery. Everything."2009, Robert V. S. Redick, The Ruling Sea, Del Ray, published 2011, →ISBN, page 138
  2. A sexual practice involving the use of knives, daggers, or swords for physical and mental stimulation.
    • When the professor turned out to be too warped even for my tastes — consensual knifeplay is one thing; drunken gunplay quite another […]2009, Quince Mountain, “Cowboy for Christ”, in Jeff Sharlet, Peter Manseau, editors, Believer, Beware: First-Person Dispatches from the Margins of Faith, Beacon Press, →ISBN, page 116
    • Michael's knifeplay had never aroused him, but that fact had never concerned Jonathan, for Michael had never insisted upon it.2009, Erastes, Transgressions, Running Press, →ISBN, page 318

Examples of knifeplay in a sentence

  • After a tense confrontation that almost lead to knifeplay, Lawrence recounted, "Mohammed Said and Abd el Kader then went away, breaking vengeance against me as a Christian."2013, Scott Anderson, Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East, Knopf, →ISBN:
  • Partly because I loved milder forms of knifeplay but had never taken it as far as I'd fantasized, but mostly because of her.2014, D. L. King, She Who Must Be Obeyed, Lethe Press, →ISBN, page 106:

Origin of knifeplay

From knife + play.

Questions about knifeplay

What does knifeplay mean?
Knifeplay means the act of fighting or cutting with a knife.
How do you use knifeplay in a sentence?
After a tense confrontation that almost lead to knifeplay, Lawrence recounted, "Mohammed Said and Abd el Kader then went away, breaking vengeance against me as a Christian."
What part of speech is knifeplay?
Knifeplay is a noun.
How do you pronounce knifeplay?
Knifeplay is pronounced /ˈnaɪf(ˌ)pleɪ/ (US).

Words near knifeplay in the dictionary

  1. knifemaker
  2. knifemakers
  3. knifemaking
  4. knifeman
  5. knifemen
  6. knifeplay
  7. knifepoint
  8. knifepoints
  9. knifeproof
  10. knifer
  11. knifers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: knifeplay (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-knifeplay.wav.

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