ChatterBank1 min ago
shiv vs shank
Thanks.
Answers
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For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.Shiv is a slang word for a knife or other sharp implement - it's thought to be a word with Romany origins - used in prison to refer to a homemade knife.
Shank is another name for the body of a nail - but it has a number of other meanings.
I reckons 'shiv' is the commonist word for a knife - used in prison, and I think 'shank' may be an Americanism, again adopted in prison, for the same thing.
Having known a lot of convicts and also scouring Google, my impression is, they can be interchangeably as both nouns and verbs, depending on the area one is from. They are both defined sometimes as homemade knife-like weapons, primarily found in jails and prisons, and/or to atrack as with a knife, using a homemade weapon. Some areas make finer distinctions such as metal vs other material, stabbing vs cutting, or shape of weapon. And some areas seem to use both shiv and shank to describe a weapon, but only one is used to describe to action. Sorry it's not cleaner and more straightforward, but it's street slang, developed across multiple countries.
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