Cleaver

A modern wood-handled cleaver
Chinese chef's knife (top) and old North American cleaver (bottom)
A cleaver in use, being used to cut pork chops from a loin of pork

A cleaver is a large knife that varies in its shape but usually resembles a rectangular-bladed hatchet. It is largely used as a kitchen or butcher knife and is mostly intended for splitting up large pieces of soft bones and slashing through thick pieces of meat. The knife's broad side can also be used for crushing in food preparation (such as garlic) and can also be used to scoop up chopped items.

Tools described as cleavers have been in use since the Acheulean period. "Cleaver" was commonly spelled clever in the late 17th century.[1]

  1. ^ de la Torre, Ignacio (2016-07-05). "The origins of the Acheulean: past and present perspectives on a major transition in human evolution". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 371 (1698). doi:10.1098/rstb.2015.0245. ISSN 0962-8436. PMC 4920301. PMID 27298475.