alfet
alfet noun: a cauldron of boiling water into which an accused person plunged his forearm, used as a form of trial in Medieval England.
Noun
alfet (plural alfets)
- A cauldron of boiling water into which an accused person plunged his forearm, used as a form of trial in Medieval England.
- ALFET, antiently ſignified the Cauldron in which boiling Water was put, for the Accuſed to plunge his Hand in up to the Elbow, by way of Trial of Purgation.[1728, E[phraim] Chambers, “Alfet”, in Cyclopædia: Or, An Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences; […] In Two Volumes, volumes I (A–H), London: […] James and John Knapton [et al.], →OCLC, page 59...
- Miss Twig, head bowed at the far end of the table, continued to eat placidly, but Jacko fixed her with a hard look. "His rooms, huh? Eh, Twigs," he said, "'tis the alfet for a ewbrice." ¶ Dimple gurgled, swallowed, and said, "And what, Jacko boy, might an alfet be?" ¶ Jacko grinned. "Yer tub a...1981, Edmund Apffel, The Last Days at St. Saturn's, New York, N.Y.: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, →ISBN, page 40
Forms of alfet
| plural | alfets |
|---|
Origin of alfet
From Medieval Latin alfetum, from Old English alfæt (“fire-vat”), from āl (“fire”) + fæt (“vat”).
Questions about alfet
- What does alfet mean?
- Alfet means a cauldron of boiling water into which an accused person plunged his forearm, used as a form of trial in Medieval England.
- What part of speech is alfet?
- Alfet is a noun.
- What is the plural of alfet?
- The plural of alfet is alfets.
Words near alfet in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: alfet (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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