What is the Spanish word for "shank"?

Tapping my Spanish-speaking collective… hold please…

Punal (with a ~ over the n… can’t figure out how to type it like that)

In Babelfish Spanish, it’s caña.
In this dictionary, it was espinilla (f) (of person); caña (f) (of horse); pierna (f) (of lamb, beef)

a shank (n.) == un vastago

to shank (v.) == de caña

@CaseyWVU10 Do you mean shank like a knife that you stab someone with? Or a cut of meat? (My answer is for the knife)

A knife like they make in prison

@essieness: A shiv is the knife you stab with, shank is the verb.

You shank someone with a shiv.

Usually.

@asmonet you are 100% correct… as a native spanish speaker (and resident of your neighbor to the south) i can tell you there’s no literal translation for the verb “Shank” or for “Shiv” for that matter… puñal is the Spanish word for knife when used as a weapon, when used as a cooking utensil (and also sometimes as a weapon) the word is “cuchillo”... the term “daga” is also used on occasion (but that term obviously translates into dagger… so doesn’t really apply).

by the way.. @robmandu… those translations are almost on target (except when you consider that the second one actually says “of cane”)

@Dr_C… heh, gotta love the google.

It was an interesting question. As can be seen from the other responders, almost every automated translation site would yield different answers. It’s good to have a native speaker reply with authority. Thx!

Ooh, shank, one of my favorite verbs. cacklesigh

lurve for cacklesigh.

@asmonet Thanks for the clarification. I sent a text to my friend who is from Mexico City and he told me punal. But he wasn’t really sure what a shank is either, so maybe we got “lost in translation”, so to speak :)

Navaja is knife or “shiv” the act of stabbing someone..used in a sentence “voy a encajarle la navaja en el corazón”

Personally, I think of puñal as a “dagger”, while the words “shank” and “shiv” have much more slang connotations, but it’s pretty close. I think of navaja as more of a pocketknife, but as far as I understand shanks, shivs, or whatever are pretty small (although my only knowledge of such things comes from watching the CourtTV channel, so what the hell do i know) but I think either of them would work, you just lose the prison connotation in the translation. Maybe if some flutherers show up who have been in jail in Mexico, we’ll all learn a more specific word for it.

Or we could all watch Spanish dubbed episodes of Oz. :)

Sounds good to me