Arkansas Toothpick Definition & Meaning

Definition

Examples

Synonyms Arkansas toothpick American

noun

Slang.

1. a bowie knife or similar sharp knifelike implement.

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Lincoln’s secretary, John Hay, described Clay on a visit to the White House, wearing “with a sublimely unconscious air, three pistols and an Arkansas toothpick”—his Bowie knife.

From The Wall Street Journal

“The butterfly knife is clearly more analogous to an ordinary pocketknife than to an Arkansas Toothpick or a Bowie knife. And none of the statutes cited by Hawaii prohibited the carry of pocketknives, much less their possession outright,” Bea wrote.

From Los Angeles Times

It is a “bowie,” of that kind known as an “Arkansas toothpick.”

From Project Gutenberg

He called this pleasant instrument an Arkansas toothpick.

From Project Gutenberg

The article I chiefly accused myself of forgetting was a stout English clasp-knife, with a large handle, a blade like an "Arkansas toothpick," and possessing the other useful appliances of picker, fleam, tweezers, lancet, and punch.

From Project Gutenberg

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.