Word.ws English Dictionary

sticking the knife in

sticking the knife in is the present participle and gerund of stick the knife in.

Meaning of stick the knife in

Verb

stick the knife in (third-person singular simple present sticks the knife in, present participle sticking the knife in, simple past and past participle stuck the knife in)

  1. (idiomatic) To say or do something deliberately and unnecessarily malicious.
    • Bengali speaks with courtly floweriness even when sticking the knife in, and Thompson's well-meaning British bluntness was not appreciated.2001, Ezra Greenspan, Jonathan Rose, Book History, volume 4, page 307

Questions about sticking the knife in

What is sticking the knife in the present participle and gerund of?
Sticking the knife in is the present participle and gerund of stick the knife in.

Words near sticking the knife in in the dictionary

  1. sticking plaster
  2. sticking plasters
  3. sticking point
  4. sticking points
  5. sticking someone on
  6. sticking the knife in
  7. sticking the landing
  8. sticking to
  9. sticking to business
  10. sticking to one's guns
  11. sticking to one's knitting

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sticking the knife in (page history and authors); stick the knife in (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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