Word.ws English Dictionary

kniving

/naɪvɪŋ/

kniving is the present participle and gerund of knive.

kniving is the misconstruction of conniving.

Meaning of conniving

Adjective

conniving (comparative more conniving, superlative most conniving)

  1. That connives; conspiratorial.
    • I waited. Then those two / Strange pilgrims of the sanctuaries of sin / Brought from beneath their large conniving cloaks / Two hidden baskets brimming with rich store / Of broken viands — pasties, jellies, meats, / Crumbs of Belshazzar's table, evil waste / Of that interminable nightly feast […]1902, Edith Wharton, The Bread of Angels

Origin of kniving

Inflected form of knive.

Likely a mishearing of the misconstrued word's pronunciation as kniving with a pronounced k, perhaps influenced by its semantic associations with backstabbing and knives.

Phrases with kniving

Words that rhyme with kniving

Questions about kniving

What is kniving the present participle and gerund of?
Kniving is the present participle and gerund of knive.
How do you pronounce kniving?
Kniving is pronounced /naɪvɪŋ/.

Words near kniving in the dictionary

  1. knives
  2. knives up
  3. knivesful
  4. knivesman
  5. knivesmen
  6. kniving
  7. kniving up
  8. Knivsta
  9. knizocyte
  10. knizocytes
  11. KNKT

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: kniving (page history and authors); conniving (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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Cite this entry: “kniving.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/kniving. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.