[MeImCounting]

I was being silly and pedantic but thats an interesting distinction!

I imagine Laozi probably knew how to have sharp knives so I defer to his wisdom as far as 4th century chinese knives go anyways. Perhaps they used a different technique there and then than the type of knife sharpening I'm familiar with.

[afiori]

Another interpretation is simply that you can only sharpen a knife so many times before there is no longer a knife at all