Word.ws English Dictionary

geneat

geneat noun: a retainer; vassal; one who holds lands of a superior either by service or payment of rent.

Noun

geneat (plural geneat or geneats)

  1. (historical) A retainer; vassal; one who holds lands of a superior either by service or payment of rent.
    • The tenants, cotsetlas, geburs, and geneats, were the highest among the semiservile.1861, C. H. Pearson, Early & Middle Ages Eng. I. 201
    • The right of the husbandman was a share right, his name was Geneat or sharer in the vill.1872, E. W. Robertson, Hist. Ess. 101

Forms of geneat

pluralgeneat
pluralgeneats

Origin of geneat

Learned borrowing from Old English ġenēat (“companion, follower, follower in battle; dependant, vassal, tenant who works for a lord”). Cognate with German Genosse (“comrade, etc.”)

Words formed from geneat

  • geneatland

Questions about geneat

What does geneat mean?
Geneat means a retainer; vassal; one who holds lands of a superior either by service or payment of rent.
What part of speech is geneat?
Geneat is a noun.
What is the plural of geneat?
The plural of geneat is geneat.

Words near geneat in the dictionary

  1. genealogizes
  2. genealogizing
  3. genealogy
  4. genearch
  5. genearchs
  6. geneat
  7. geneats
  8. genebank
  9. genebanks
  10. genechip
  11. genechips

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: geneat (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: “geneat.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/geneat. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.