jack-knife

  1. Noun.  A compact folding knife.
  2. Noun.  The front-dive pike, in which the body folds and unfolds.
  3. Noun.  (colloquial) A semi-trailer truck accident in which the vehicle mimics the closing of a jack-knife.
  4. Noun.  (statistics) (alternative spelling of, jackknife) .
  5. Verb.  To fold in the middle, as a jackknife does.
  6. Verb.  (colloquial) To cause a semi-trailer truck to fold like a jackknife in a traffic accident.

This is an unmodified, but possibly outdated, definition from Wiktionary and used here under the Creative Commons license. Wiktionary is a great resource. If you like it too, please donate to Wikimedia.

This entry was last updated on RefTopia from its source on 3/20/2012.