Word.ws English Dictionary

caitiffs

caitiffs is the plural of caitiff.

Meaning of caitiff

Noun

caitiff (plural caitiffs)

  1. A base or despicable person; a wretch.
    • "How now, you scullions and cullions: bring hither a pair of cow's hooves to out face this contumelious caitiff."1936, Norman Lindsay, The Flyaway Highway, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 44
  2. (obsolete) A captive or prisoner, particularly a galley slave.
  3. (archaic) A villain, a coward or wretch.
    • (Aaron Burr and Andrew Jackson ride together in Tennessee; Burr narrates): Jackson shouted at me his view of the duel. "Never read such a damned lot of nonsense as the press has been writing! All that hypocritical caterwauling for that Creole bastard (referring to Alexander Hamilton) who fought you...1973, Gore Vidal, Burr, chapter 36

See all 4 meanings of caitiff

Questions about caitiffs

What is caitiffs the plural of?
Caitiffs is the plural of caitiff.

Words near caitiffs in the dictionary

  1. Caistor St Edmund
  2. Cait
  3. Caithness
  4. Caitican
  5. caitiff
  6. caitiffs
  7. caitive
  8. caitives
  9. Caitlin
  10. Caitlind
  11. Caitlins

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: caitiffs (page history and authors); caitiff (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: “caitiffs.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/caitiffs. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.