Sgian dubh
Type of small knife that is part of the traditional Scottish Highland and Isle male dress
A sgian dubh ( skee-ən-DOO; Scottish Gaelic pronunciation: [s̪kʲənˈt̪u]) is a small, single-edged knife worn as part of traditional Scottish Highland dress. It is worn tucked into the top of the kilt hose with the hilt visible.
Etymology and spelling
The name comes from the Scottish Gaelic sgian-dubh, from sgian ('knife') and dubh ('black', also with the secondary meaning of 'hidden'.).
Although sgian is feminine, so that a modern Gael might refer to a black knife as sgian dhubh, the term for the ceremonial knife is a set-phrase containing a historical form with blocked lenition.
Other spellings are found in English, including skean-dhu and skene-dhu. The Gaelic plural, sgianan-dubha, is only rarely encountered in English.
Origins
The sgian-dubh may have evolved from the sgian-achlais, a dagger that could be concealed under the armpit. Used by the Scots of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, this knife was slightly larger than the average modern sgian-dubh and was carried in the upper sleeve or lining of the body of the jacket.
Draconian Scots laws introduced by the Scots Privy Council under the Stewart King in the late 1500s, intended to reduce interclan honour feuds and duelling, included the outlawing of hidden weapons. {Basilikon Doron 1599}.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sgian dubh” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.