Bowie-knife

Bowie-knife, an American hunting dagger, named after its inventor, Colonel Jim Bowie, who, born about 1790, fell at Fort Alamo in the Texan war (1836). In a great mêlée near Natchez (1827), in which six men were killed and fifteen wounded, the colonel despatched an opponent with a knife made out of a blacksmith's rasp or big file; and this knife he afterwards had fashioned at Philadelphia into the weapon with which his name is associated. Its curved, double-edged blade is 10 to 15 inches long, and above an inch wide.