shiv

noun

1. (countable, slang)A knife, especially a makeshift one fashioned from something not normally used as a weapon (like a plastic spoon or a toothbrush).

   “It's perhaps fitting that I write this introduction in jail—that graduate school of survival. Here you learn how to use toothpaste as glue, fashion a shiv out of a spoon and build intricate communication networks.”

   “Mr. Simpson finished “If I Did It” with the help of a ghostwriter, but after a public outcry, the book was shelved, and the woman who had agreed to publish it lost her job. “Basically, I got the shiv,” Ms. Regan said in a phone interview this week.”

2. (uncountable)A particular woody by-product of processing flax or hemp.

verb

1. (slang, transitive)To stab (someone) with a shiv.

   “Anyway, that's how Jimmie came to be shivved and left to bleed out in the shower.”

2. (broadly, slang, transitive)To stab (someone) with anything not normally used as a stabbing weapon.

name

1. A male given name from Sanskrit mainly used in India.
2. A diminutive of the female given name Siobhan.

   “'Hiya, Shiv. It's Bobby Hogan here.' Detective Inspector Bobby Hogan. She'd asked him before not to call her Shiv. A lot of people tried it. Siobhan, pronounced Shi-vawn, shortened to Shiv. When people wrote her name down, it turned into all sorts of erroneous spellings. She remembered that Fairstone had called her 'Shiv' a few times, attempting familiarity. She hated it, and knew she should correct Hogan, but she didn't.”