thief knot in English

Forms: thief knots [plural] [Show additional information ▼] [Hide additional information ▲]

Etymology: Supposedly used as a theft-detection system; thieves would retie bags with a more common reef knot, revealing the theft. Head templates: {{en-noun}} thief knot (plural thief knots)

[Show JSON for postprocessed kaikki.org data shown on this page ▼] [Hide JSON for postprocessed kaikki.org data shown on this page ▲]

{
  "etymology_text": "Supposedly used as a theft-detection system; thieves would retie bags with a more common reef knot, revealing the theft.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "thief knots",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "thief knot (plural thief knots)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Entries with translation boxes",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "a knot for tying together two ends of rope; similar to a reef knot, but with the tails (short ends) on opposite sides; weaker than a reef knot"
      ],
      "id": "en-thief_knot-en-noun-RZG4hmaJ",
      "links": [
        [
          "knot",
          "knot"
        ],
        [
          "end",
          "end"
        ],
        [
          "reef knot",
          "reef knot"
        ],
        [
          "tail",
          "tail"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "thief knot"
}

[Show JSON for raw wiktextract data ▼] [Hide JSON for raw wiktextract data ▲]

{
  "etymology_text": "Supposedly used as a theft-detection system; thieves would retie bags with a more common reef knot, revealing the theft.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "thief knots",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "thief knot (plural thief knots)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "Entries with translation boxes",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "a knot for tying together two ends of rope; similar to a reef knot, but with the tails (short ends) on opposite sides; weaker than a reef knot"
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "knot",
          "knot"
        ],
        [
          "end",
          "end"
        ],
        [
          "reef knot",
          "reef knot"
        ],
        [
          "tail",
          "tail"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "thief knot"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-03-25 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-03-03 using wiktextract (05c257f and 9d9a410). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.

"thief knot" meaning in English

Noun