What is an alternative term for *Swiss army knife*? As in a general multi-purpose tool. It is a word that everybody understands, but I would like to know some alternatives. Clarification: The term *Swiss army knife* is often used to express a multi-purpose, versatile tool outside the contexts of knives or armies. - The Swiss army knife for writing books. - Perl is the Swiss army knife among programming languages. - Swiss army knife of codecs (Google's search entry completion). I think that "multi-tool" or "one stop shop" are adequate alternative, maybe there are more?