Word.ws English Dictionary

rief

rief is the alternative form of reif.

Meaning of reif

Noun

reif (usually uncountable, plural reifs)

  1. (Scotland, obsolete, usually) Robbery.
    • The opposition, which, as we shall see, was headed by Archbishop Beaton, protested against the "daily slaughters, murders, reifs, thefts, depredations, and heavy attemptates, that are daily and hourly committed within this realm in fault of justice."c. 1524, a letter, recorded in The History of Scotland (John Hill Burton, 1873), volume 3, page 109

Forms of rief

pluralriefs

Origin of rief

See reaf and reave.

Words formed from rief

Questions about rief

What is rief the alternative form of?
Rief is the alternative form of reif.

Words near rief in the dictionary

  1. Riedlingers
  2. Riedls
  3. Riedones
  4. Riedy
  5. Riedys
  6. rief
  7. Riefenstahlian
  8. Rieff
  9. Riefler
  10. Riefler clock
  11. Riefler clocks

Source and license

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