Word.ws English Dictionary

storyknifing

storyknifing noun: a traditional Yup'ik play activity of young girls in which they tell stories accompanying them with illustrations scratched in the mud, sand, or snow using a storyknife or stick.

Noun

storyknifing (uncountable)

  1. A traditional Yup'ik play activity of young girls in which they tell stories accompanying them with illustrations scratched in the mud, sand, or snow using a storyknife or stick.
    • Symbols for monkey bars, swings, slides, and seesaws, which are common in the storyknifing we observed, of course, were not drawn before such articles were introduced into the culture with the building of schools and playgrounds in the villages. The use of the symbol or the word "yes" to signify...1994, Jaipaul L. Roopnarine, James Ewald Johnson, Frank H. Hooper, Children's Play in Diverse Cultures, →ISBN, page 194
    • Once oral stories are learned, they can be retold through storyknifing, song, and dance.1997, Nancy H. Hornberger, Indigenous Literacies in the Americas, →ISBN

Examples of storyknifing in a sentence

  • The use of the symbol or the word "yes" to signify the end of a storyknifing session was not used by the women in Margaret and Leota's generation.1994, Jaipaul L. Roopnarine, James Ewald Johnson, Frank H. Hooper, Children's Play in Diverse Cultures, →ISBN, page 194:
  • One of their favorite storyknifing places was under an old, abandoned, Bureau of Indian Affairs school.2012, Kathleen B. deMarrais, Inside Stories: Qualitative Research Reflections, →ISBN, page 94:
  • The children of Bethel, then, come from diverse communities, brining their own storyknifing styles with them.2013, Carolyn Kremers, Upriver, →ISBN, page 81:

Origin of storyknifing

From story + knifing or storyknife + -ing.

Questions about storyknifing

What does storyknifing mean?
Storyknifing means a traditional Yup'ik play activity of young girls in which they tell stories accompanying them with illustrations scratched in the mud, sand, or snow using a storyknife or stick.
How do you use storyknifing in a sentence?
The use of the symbol or the word "yes" to signify the end of a storyknifing session was not used by the women in Margaret and Leota's generation.
What part of speech is storyknifing?
Storyknifing is a noun.

Words near storyknifing in the dictionary

  1. storyettes
  2. storyful
  3. storying
  4. storyings
  5. storyknife
  6. storyknifing
  7. storyknives
  8. storyland
  9. storyless
  10. storylessly
  11. storylessness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: storyknifing (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: “storyknifing.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/storyknifing. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.