A small knife or blade, particularly one used as a weapon or tool in South African slang.
From Afrikaans 'blikkie' meaning a small tin or blade, derived from 'blik' (tin/metal), borrowed into South African English in the mid-20th century as slang for improvised weapons.
This word traveled from Dutch metalworking vocabulary into the streets of Johannesburg, showing how colonial languages blend with local slang to create entirely new meanings—a tin container becomes a street weapon through pure context.
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