What are knife dreams about?

You can gain insight from thinking about any dream, no matter how strange. Only you, as the dreamer, have final say on what your dream may or may not mean. Each dream is unique.

The DreamWell dictionary provides information on how each dream symbol appears in dreams in general. Finding how experience knives in dreams can be a key to understanding its meaning.

Our emotions in dreams can help us understand its meaning. Pay attention to how you felt in the dream. Pay attention to how you feel about knives in dreams. See how you feel about knives now, in your waking life.

The symbolism of a knife in a dream can connect with associations like “sharp,” “close,” and “cut.” An incisive intellect is “sharp as a knife.” Cutting with a sharp knife can symbolize getting to the heart of a matter or getting to the point, as in the phrase, “Cut to the chase.”

Cutting someone with a knife requires close proximity. To be close to someone in a dream can mean closeness in the personal sense, such as a close friend or relative. So a knife is more likely to be used as a weapon when a dream tells a story about something or someone close and personal.

Knife fights in dreams can symbolize intense, heated situations. Knife fights rarely play out as they do in the movies, where it looks more like dancing or boxing. Instead, they’re usually brief, up close, and brutal. The situation symbolized as a knife fight can be something that’s already happened, or something you fear will happen. For example, you know that breaking up with your significant other is going to be an intense situation, or that a confrontation with your sibling about a family matter is going to be heated.

Cutting in a dream can symbolize wounding, as in, “Her comment cut to the bone.” This use of the symbolism of a knife will usually be accompanied by fighting, cutting, and wounding. Marks on the physical body from a knife symbolize marks on the emotional body, on the psyche. It hurts! See: Fighting, Wounds

Think of what can be wounded in the figurative sense. Pride and reputation can be wounded. Self-image can be wounded. Emotions can be wounded. Dreams show these sorts of wounds as physical when really they are personal, emotional or psychological.

Cutting and stabbing are associated emotions like anger, frustration, and bitterness. When related back to the previous idea of having to be close to someone to cut or stab him or her, it can mean that someone close has really hurt you, or vice-versa. For example, a woman stabs a man in the heart while coldly looking him in the eyes. See: Former partners

Up close can also mean “engaging.” Though fighting with knives often has negative associations, it can mean simply that you are trying to get a point across or engage someone. For example, a teacher tries to engage students with the course material, and to do so he or she comes up with “sharp” analogies. The difference in symbolism is obvious in how it plays out in a dream.

Cutting can mean “cut off,” as in cut off support or cut off relations. You’re done, finished. This use of the symbolism is more likely when a rope, cord, or arm is cut.

An intense dream where the dreamer observes his sister cut their brother’s throat symbolizes that she doesn’t want to hear what either brother has to say about the man she plans to marry. The brothers know the guy is a player, but the sister is blinded by love.

Cutting your own throat can mean “ruin your chances” or sabotage your life. This symbolism can be projected onto a dream character that represents you.

Throwing a knife at someone can symbolize hurling nasty comments, insults, and sharp words. Words cross the distance between people as sound waves, so throwing a knife is an apt metaphor when those words are meant to cause harm. Also consider the idea of crossing the distance of time to engage with a memory of someone who hurt you. Basically, you’re fighting with a memory.

A dream about defending yourself from someone with a knife can symbolize defending yourself from harm, or from verbal or personal attacks. But again, remember that most dream characters represent something about you, so a person with a knife might represent the ways you criticize yourself, or some part of yourself that has turned hostile toward you.

Defending yourself in a dream can mean you want to maintain some sort of illusion about yourself, keep something repressed, or deny a fact. For example, a woman dreams about going into the basement of her childhood home and finding a homicidal child armed with a knife. It symbolizes her inner child that’s hostile because it’s hurt and she’s ignoring it.

Looking for a knife with which to defend yourself can mean you feel the need to defend yourself personally or physically. For example, you have a dispute with a neighbor and wonder whether the person is capable of creeping into your house late at night to harm you. The fear plays out in a dream in a scenario where you fear someone is in your house, and you look for a knife to defend yourself. A knife is used as symbolism because the neighbor is someone who lives close to you.

But also consider the ways you protect yourself from the world, from misfortune, from intrusion. See: Intruders

A Swiss Army knife can symbolize taking different approaches to solving a problem.

See also: Dissecting, Former partners, Intruders, Surgery, Wounds

This interpretation is from ""The Dream Interpretation Dictionary: Symbols, Signs, and Meanings" and is provided by J.M. DeBord aka "RadOwl". He is the author of several acclaimed books about dreaming, the host of The Dreams That Shape Us podcast, and is a moderator of r/Dreams, one of the largest dream sharing communities on the internet.