Word.ws English Dictionary

Caithness

US/ˈkeɪθnɪs/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Scotland/ˈkeθnɛs/

Caithness proper noun: a historical county in the far north of Scotland, which was abolished and merged into Highland Region in 1975, which became the Highland council area in 1996.

Proper noun

Caithness

  1. A historical county in the far north of Scotland, which was abolished and merged into Highland Region in 1975, which became the Highland council area in 1996.
  2. A Scottish earldom.
  3. A type of cheese from Caithness in Scotland.

Origin of Caithness

The placename is of Pictish origin, named after a tribe called the Catti, with the common Old Norse suffix -ness (“headland”). The tribe name is of uncertain origin, but compare *katus (“battle”).

Words formed from Caithness

Questions about Caithness

What does Caithness mean?
Caithness means a historical county in the far north of Scotland, which was abolished and merged into Highland Region in 1975, which became the Highland council area in 1996.
What part of speech is Caithness?
Caithness is a proper noun.
How do you pronounce Caithness?
Caithness is pronounced /ˈkeθnɛs/ (Scotland).

Words near Caithness in the dictionary

  1. Caister
  2. Caister-on-Sea
  3. Caisters
  4. Caistor St Edmund
  5. Cait
  6. Caithness
  7. Caitican
  8. caitiff
  9. caitiffs
  10. caitive
  11. caitives

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Caithness (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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Cite this entry: “Caithness.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/caithness. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.