Glossary of Knife Styles

Indoor Knives
Cutlery knives and kitchen knives are the knife styles most often associated with indoor use. The boning knife, bread knife, carving knife, and table knife would be included in those two categories.
Kitchen knives in particular have become highly specialized. A chef's knife or cook's knife is one multi-purpose knife that can be found in the kitchen, but otherwise most indoor knives are created for a particular culinary purpose. The lengthy list of specialized indoor knife styles would include the paring knife, cleaver, fillet knife, peeling knife, and trimming knife.

Outdoor Knives
Outdoor knives can be used for anything from chopping brush to combat. But the three outdoor knife styles that are most popular are the hunting knife, survival knife, and tactical knife.
A hunting knife is typically a fixed blade knife with a design and features suitable for skinning, gutting, and similar tasks. Survival knives are usually serrated fixed blade knives with hollow handles that contain survival equipment such as fishing line, bandages, water purification tablets, etc& A compass is often positioned in the pommel.

Tactical Knife
A tactical knife is typically designed as a combat knife, or in the civilian world, as a rescue knife or police knife.

Fixed Blade Knife and Folding Knife
Beyond even the boundaries of indoor and outdoor knives, knives can be grouped into the categories of fixed blade knives and folding knives. Fixed blade knives are inherently stronger and better suited to heavy-duty outdoor tasks. Folding knives are easier to transport and more likely to be used for a variety of tasks. Pocket knives, utility knives, and stockman's knives are folding knives.

Multi-Tool Knife aka Utility Knife or Pocket Knife
All three of these knife terms have commonly been subsumed under the term Swiss Army knife. The benefit of these knives is that they provide a great variety of blades and other features for handling a tremendous range of problems. A pocket knife might include multiple blades, a corkscrew, saw, nail file, scissors, magnifying glass, can opener, or pliers. Modern utility knives are beginning to sport such features as digital clocks and LED lights.