A butcher knife is a knife

Knife

A knife is a cutting tool with an exposed cutting edge or blade, hand-held or otherwise, with or without a handle. Knives were used at least two-and-a-half million years ago, as evidenced by the Oldowan tools...

 designed and used primarily for the butcher

Butcher

A butcher is a person who may slaughter animals, dress their flesh, sell their meat or any combination of these three tasks. They may prepare standard cuts of meat, poultry, fish and shellfish for sale in retail or wholesale food establishments...

ing and/or dressing of animals.

During the late 18th century to mid 1840s, the butcher knife was a key tool for mountain men. Simple, useful and cheap to produce, they were used for everything from skinning

Skinning

Skinning, a gerund from the verb to skin, commonly refers to the act of skin removal.The process is usually done with animals, mainly as preparation of the meat beneath and/or use for the fur...

 beaver

Beaver

The beaver is a primarily nocturnal, large, semi-aquatic rodent. Castor includes two extant species, North American Beaver and Eurasian Beaver . Beavers are known for building dams, canals, and lodges . They are the second-largest rodent in the world...

, cutting food, self defense, and scalping

Scalping

Scalping is the act of removing another person's scalp or a portion of their scalp, either from a dead body or from a living person. The initial purpose of scalping was to provide a trophy of battle or portable proof of a combatant's prowess in war...

. During this time John Wilson, of Sheffield, England, was a major exporter of this type of knife to the Americas . These knives can be identified by brand markings and the stamp I. Wilson. In the 1830s an American company named J. Russell

Dexter-Russell

Dexter-Russell, Inc. is a cutlery manufacturing company in the town of Southbridge, MA, It is the largest US manufacturer of professional cutlery, and is also the oldest cutlery manufacturer in the United States.-Harrington Cutlery Company:...

 became the major producer of inexpensive, high quality cutlery. They soon became a name in every household and in the mountain man mythos.

Today the butcher knife is used throughout the world in the meat processing trade. The French chef's knife

Chef's knife

In cooking, a chef's knife, also known as a French knife or a cook's knife, is a cutting tool used in food preparation. The chef's knife was originally designed primarily to slice and disjoint large cuts of beef...

 is a derivation of the butcher knife, and is used as a general utility knife. Other similar meat-cutting knives include the carving knife and the cleaver knife

Cleaver (knife)

A cleaver is a large knife that varies in its shape but usually resembles a rectangular-bladed hatchet. It is used mostly for hacking through bones as a kitchen knife or butcher knife, and can also be used for crushing via its broad side, typically garlic....

. The carving knife usually is designed for slicing thin cuts of meat and often has a blunt or rounded point, with a scalloped or granton blade to improve separation of sliced cuts of meat. The cleaver knife is similar to the butcher's knife, but has a lighter and thinner blade for precision cutting.