knave
/neɪv/
knave noun: a boy; especially, a boy servant.
Noun
knave (plural knaves)
- A boy; especially, a boy servant.
- Any male servant; a menial.
- Many a duteous and knee-crooking knave that, doting on his own obsequious bondage, wears out his time, much like his master's ass, For naught but provender, and when he's old – cashier'd! Whip me such honest knaves.c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Othello, the Moore of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac...
- A tricky, deceitful fellow; a dishonest person.
- I could plainly diſcover from whence one Family derives a long Chin; why a ſecond hath abounded with Knaves for two Generations, and Fools for two more; why a third happened to be crack-brained, and a fourth to be Sharpers.1726 October 28, [Jonathan Swift], “A Further Account of Glubbdubdrib. […]”, in Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. […] [Gulliver’s Travels], volume II, London: […] Benj[amin] Motte...
- He was a man whom scarcely any amount of fortune could have benefited permanently, and who was made to be ruined, to cheat small tradesmen, to be the victim of astuter sharpers: to be niggardly and reckless, and as destitute of honesty as the people who cheated him, and a dupe, chiefly because he...1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 44, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published...
- A playing card marked with the figure of a servant or a soldier.
- Synonyms:
- jack
knave meaning in Hindi, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam
knave in Hindi
- playing card
- ग़ुलाम ġulām
knave in Urdu
- playing card
- غُلام ġulām
knave in Bengali
- playing card
- গোলাম gōlam
knave in Malayalam
- തെമ്മാടി, കള്ളൻ
More languagesFewer languages
- knave in Kannada
- ಅಪ್ರಾಮಾಣಿಕ, ಅಯೋಗ್ಯ, ಭಂಡ, ದ್ರೋಹಿ
- knave in Arabic
- أَعْرَج ʔaʕraj
- knave in Malay
- durjana, bedebah, penyangak, pekak
- knave in Thai
- แจ็ค jɛ̀k
- knave in Vietnamese
- bồi
- knave in Myanmar
- ဂျက် gyak
Examples of knave in a sentence
- I had never defrauded a man of a farthing, nor called him knave behind his back.1908, W[illiam] B[lair] M[orton] Ferguson, chapter II, in Zollenstein, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC:
- Whenever I go to beat those knaves / my tapsters, out she [my wife] comes with clubs and staves, / "Go on!" she screams — and it's a caterwaul — / "You kill those dogs!1951, Geoffrey Chaucer, translated by Nevill Coghill, The Canterbury Tales: Translated into Modern English (Penguin Classics), Penguin...
Synonyms of knave
24 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of knave
| plural | knaves |
|---|
Origin of knave
From Middle English knave, knafe, from Old English cnafa (“child, boy, youth; servant”), from Proto-West Germanic *knabō. Cognate to Dutch knaap and German Knabe.
Words formed from knave
Phrases with knave
Words that rhyme with knave
Questions about knave
- What does knave mean?
- Knave means a boy; especially, a boy servant.
- What is knave in Hindi?
- Knave in Hindi is ग़ुलाम (ġulām). See Knave meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use knave in a sentence?
- I had never defrauded a man of a farthing, nor called him knave behind his back.
- What part of speech is knave?
- Knave is a noun.
- How do you pronounce knave?
- Knave is pronounced /neɪv/.
- What is the plural of knave?
- The plural of knave is knaves.
Words near knave in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: knave (page history and authors); knave (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); knave (Kannada Wiktionary) (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-knave.ogg.
Cite this entry: “knave.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/knave. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.