Meaning

noun a short knife with a pointed blade used for piercing or stabbing

noun a character used in printing to indicate a cross reference or footnote

originFrom Middle English daggere, daggare, dagard, probably adapted from Old French dague (1229), related to Occitan, Italian, Spanish daga, Dutch dagge, German Degen, Middle Low German dagge (“knife's point”), Old Norse daggarðr, Danish daggert, Faroese daggari, Welsh dager, dagr, Breton dac, Albanian thikë (“a knife, dagger”), thek (“to stab, to pierce with a sharp object”). In English attested from…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0