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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

bodkin.

A small sharp pointed tool for making holes in cloth or leather.

6 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈbɒdkɪn/
  1. A small sharp pointed tool for making holes in cloth or leather.

  2. A blunt needle used for threading ribbon or cord through a hem or casing.

  3. A hairpin.

  4. A dagger.

  5. A type of long thin arrowhead.

  6. A sharp tool, like an awl, formerly used for pressing down individual type characters (e.g. letters) from a column or page in making corrections.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English boydekin (“dagger”), apparently from *boyde, *boide (of unknown [Celtic?] origin) + -kin. Cognate with Scots botkin, boitkin, boikin (“bodkin”).

adv/ˈbɒdkɪn/
  1. Closely wedged between two people.

    not-comparable
    to sit bodkin
Where this word comes from

From Middle English boydekin (“dagger”), apparently from *boyde, *boide (of unknown [Celtic?] origin) + -kin. Cognate with Scots botkin, boitkin, boikin (“bodkin”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.