Knivvle noun a sharp blow; verb to punch or hit
‘“S’im, aye? Shall I knivvle him for ye, Maggie?”’ (Voyager)
There are a lot of spelling variations for this word (nevel, knevell, knivel etc.) and it probably has multiple origins too - with strong Scandinavian influences (Swedish knyffla to beat with the fists, Old Icelandic hnefa to grip with the fist, Norwegian nevla to grip or squeeze). It is closely related to neive (fist), which is also a Scandinavian borrowing.
Knivvling doesn’t need to be violent though. You can knvivvle (knead) dough for example, or knivvle (palpate) a patient. ‘Whin da doctor started nyivvellin around da sma o me back I coodna help laachin.’ (John J Graham The Shetland Dictionary, 1979).
However, more often than not, a knivvling is a good pummelling. There’s an example of this in Dandie Dinmont’s account to his wife of being jumped on his way home: ‘just when I had ga'en up to Lourie Lowther's, and had bidden the drinking of twa cheerers, and gotten just in again upon the moss, and was whigging cannily [walking carefully] awa hame, twa landloupers [vagabonds] jumpit out of a peat-hag on me … and got me down, and knevelled me sair aneuch’ (Walter Scott Guy Mannering, 1815)
There’s an earlier example, painting a pretty picture, from Alexander Nicol’s Poems on Several Subjects (1766): ‘Some wi’ nevels had sare snouts.’
In Allan Ramsay’s Christ’s Kirk on the Grene (Canto 2, 1718) Hutchon is somewhat punch-drunk after a skirmish: ‘“Wi’ nevels I’m amaist fawn faint, My chafts [jaws] are dung a char [knocked awry].” Then took his bonnet to the bent [coarse grass], And dadit aff [shook off] the glar [muck], Fou clean that day.’
But it’s not just men throwing the punches. Here’s an example from The Muckomachy (1846) of a woman dishing it out: ‘Aince out her sturdy neives she threw, And gave his cheek some dainty nevels.’