How to Pronounce Jackknife

To pronounce "jackknife", say JACKKN-if-e — 3 syllables. Tap play below to hear it in four English accents, or practice it syllable by syllable.

jackknife

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Accent

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Speed

Syllable by syllable — tap each one

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Syllables

Letters

JACKKN-if-e

Say it like

"jackknife" has 3 syllables: jackkn-if-e. It rhymes with jack-knife, if that helps it stick.

Sounds exactly like: jack-knife — easy to mix up when writing.

noun

A compact folding knife.
“He kept a jack-knife in his pocket for various tasks.”
The front-dive pike, in which the body folds and unfolds.
“It took me hundreds of dives to master even the simple jackknife”

verb

To fold in the middle, as a jackknife does.
“The cat jackknifed in the air and landed gracefully on its feet.”
To cause a semi-trailer truck to fold like a jackknife in a traffic accident.
“Before I knew what was happening, I'd jack-knifed the truck.”

noun

A resampling method that applies estimators to all subsamples that each omit a single different group (possibly of a single datapoint) of the original sample to provide a sample distribution of the estimate.

Practicing rhymes trains the same ending sounds.

How many syllables are in "jackknife"?▾

"Jackknife" has 3 syllables: jackkn · if · e.

What does "jackknife" mean?▾

Jackknife: A compact folding knife.

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