Word.ws English Dictionary

knab

/næb/

knab verb: to nab or steal.

Verb

knab (third-person singular simple present knabs, present participle knabbing, simple past and past participle knabbed)

  1. (colloquial) To nab or steal.
  2. (obsolete) To seize with the teeth; to gnaw or bite.
    • a Mouthful of Fresh Grass to Knab upon1692, Roger L’Estrange, “ (please specify the fable number.) (please specify the name of the fable.)”, in Fables, of Æsop and Other Eminent Mythologists: […], London: […] R[ichard] Sare, […], →OCLC

Noun

knab (plural knabs)

  1. (Northumbria, archaic) A hill.
  2. (Orkney, Scotland, Shetland) a promontory or headland

Proper noun capitalized: Knab

Knab (plural Knabs)

  1. A surname.

Forms of knab

Verb
third-person singular presentknabs
present participleknabbing
past participleknabbed
pastknabbed
Noun
pluralknabs
Proper noun
pluralKnabs

Origin of knab

See nab, and compare knap.

See nab, knob (in the sense of a rounded hill).

Words that rhyme with knab

17 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about knab

What does knab mean?
Knab means to nab or steal.
What part of speech is knab?
Knab can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce knab?
Knab is pronounced /næb/.
What is the past tense of knab?
The past tense of knab is knabbed.

Words near knab in the dictionary

  1. Knaack
  2. Knaacks
  3. Knaak
  4. Knaaks
  5. Knaanic
  6. knab
  7. knabbed
  8. knabbing
  9. knabble
  10. Knable
  11. Knables

Source and license

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