Word.ws English Dictionary

caitive

/ˈkeɪtɪv/

caitive noun: a captive.

Noun

caitive (plural caitives)

  1. (obsolete) A captive.
    • What hard mishap him brought to such distresse,
      And made that caitives thrall, the thrall of wretchedness1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
    • When whelmed in their wicked worke those cursed Caitives lay
      The Earth their mother tooke their bloud yet warme and (as they say)
      Did give it life.1567, Ovid, “(please specify the book number or chapter)”, in Arthur Golding, transl., The XV. Bookes of P. Ouidius Naso, Entytuled Metamorphosis, […], London: […] Willyam Seres […], →OCLC

Forms of caitive

pluralcaitives

Questions about caitive

What does caitive mean?
Caitive means a captive.
What part of speech is caitive?
Caitive is a noun.
How do you pronounce caitive?
Caitive is pronounced /ˈkeɪtɪv/.
What is the plural of caitive?
The plural of caitive is caitives.

Words near caitive in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: caitive (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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