[f. the name of one Colonel Bowie (see last quot.); originally, according to Bartlett, ‘pronounced boo-ee’ (bū·i).] A large knife, with a blade from ten to fifteen inches long and above an inch broad, curved and double-edged near the point, carried as a weapon in the wilder parts of the United States.
1842. Dickens, Amer. Notes (1850), 32/2. A sewing society … which … never comes to fisty cuffs or bowie-knives as sane assemblies have been known to do elsewhere.
1850. Mrs. Stowe, Uncle Tom’s C., xxviii. 268. St. Clare received a fatal stab in the side with a bowie-knife.
1858. O. W. Holmes, Aut. Breakf.-t., 21. The American bowie-knife is the same tool [gladius] modified to meet the daily wants of civilized society.
1885. Daily News, 9 Feb., 5/3. The hunting-dagger which belonged to the redoubtable Colonel James Bowie, and which has served as the pattern of all subsequent bowie-knives…. It is a formidable double-edged weapon, with a horn handle and a curved blade fifteen inches long and an inch and a quarter wide at the hilt.
Hence Bowie-kniving vbl. sb.
1852. Househ. Words, IV. 61/1. The Yankee … bowie-kniving the last British traveller who has published his impressions of America.
1861. Sala, Tw. round Clock, 350. Not impassible to imputations of gouging, bowie-kniving and knuckle-dusting.
