knight

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See also: Knight

English

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A knight (warrior).
A knight (chess).

Pronunciation

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Etymology 1

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From Middle English knight, knyght, kniht, from Old English cniht (“boy; servant, knight”), from Proto-West Germanic *kneht.

Alternative forms

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Noun

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knight (plural knights)

  1. (historical) A young servant or follower; a trained military attendant in service of a lord.
    • 2001, Michael S. Drake, Problematics of Military Power: Government, Discipline and the Subject of Violence, →ISBN, page 97:
      Not all knights held fiefs, and it was not unusual for knights to buy themselves freedom from the obligations of the fief, or even to abscond with the arms provided by their lord, becoming a part of the large number of unenfeoffed, wandering knights available for hire […]
  2. (historical) A minor nobleman with an honourable military rank who had served as a page and squire.
  3. (by extension) An armored and mounted warrior of the Middle Ages.
    King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table
    • 1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 54:
      There are two tombs, each bearing effigies of a knight and his lady. One is 14th century, the other 15th century. The earlier knight wears chain mail and his lady has long, flowing hair. The later knight has plate armour, and his wife wears a wimple.
  4. (law, historical) A person obliged to provide knight service in exchange for maintenance of an estate held in knight's fee.
  5. (modern) A person on whom a knighthood has been conferred by a monarch.
  6. (literary) A brave, chivalrous and honorable man devoted to a noble cause or love interest.
  8. (chess) A chess piece, often in the shape of a horse's head, that is moved two squares in one direction and one at right angles to that direction in a single move, leaping over any intervening pieces.
  9. (card games, dated) A playing card bearing the figure of a knight; the knave or jack.
  10. (entomology) Any of various nymphalid butterflies of the genus Ypthima.
  11. (modern) Any mushroom belonging to genus Tricholoma.
Synonyms
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  • (chess piece): horse (informal)
Hyponyms
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Coordinate terms
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Derived terms
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Terms derived from the noun knight
Translations
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See also
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Chess pieces in English · chess pieces, chessmen (see also: chess) (layout · text)
♚ ♛ ♜ ♝ ♞ ♟
king queen rook, castle bishop knight pawn

Etymology 2

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From Middle English knighten, kniȝten, from the noun. Cognate with Middle High German knehten.

Verb

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knight (third-person singular simple present knights, present participle knighting, simple past and past participle knighted)

  2. (transitive) To confer knighthood upon.
    Synonym: beknight
    The king knighted the young squire.
    • 1971, Clayton C. Barbeau, Future of the family:
      Highborn boys were sent off to another noble household at the age of about seven, to serve strenuously as pages and later as esquires to their lord before they themselves were knighted, looked around for a "lady" and incidentally got married and produced more knightlets, whom they never got to know at all well.
  3. (chess, transitive) To promote (a pawn) to a knight.
Synonyms
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Derived terms
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Terms derived from the verb to knight
Translations
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See also

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References

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  • “knight”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

Middle English

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Noun

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knight

  1. Alternative form of knyght
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