Word.ws English Dictionary

mastives

mastives is the plural of mastiff.

Meaning of mastiff

Noun

mastiff (plural mastiffs or (archaic) mastives)

  1. One of an old breed of powerful, deep-chested, and smooth-coated dogs, used chiefly as watchdogs and guard dogs.
    • At which time, they wryte that Demoſthenes told the people of Athens, the fable of the ſheepe and woulues, how that the woulues came on a time, and willed the ſheepe, if they woulde haue peace with them, to deliuer them their maſtiues that kept them.1579, Plutarke of Chæronea [i.e., Plutarch], “The Life of Demosthenes”, in Thomas North, transl., The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romaines, […], London: […] Richard Field, →OCLC, page 908

Questions about mastives

What is mastives the plural of?
Mastives is the plural of mastiff.

Words near mastives in the dictionary

  1. Mastins
  2. mastitic
  3. mastitides
  4. mastitis
  5. mastitises
  6. mastives
  7. mastless
  8. mastlike
  9. mastlin
  10. mastman
  11. mastmen

Source and license

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