Word.ws English Dictionary

unknightly

unknightly adjective: not knightly.

Adjective

unknightly (comparative more unknightly, superlative most unknightly)

  1. Not knightly.
    • There still faintly beamed from the woman's features something of the freshness, and even the prettiness, of her youth; rendering it probable that the personal charms which Tess could boast of were in main part her mother's gift, and therefore unknightly, unhistorical.1891, Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, volume 1, London: James R. Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., page 31
  2. Of behaviour, not befitting a knight; ungallant.

Forms of unknightly

comparativemore unknightly
superlativemost unknightly

Origin of unknightly

From un- + knightly.

Words formed from unknightly

Questions about unknightly

What does unknightly mean?
Unknightly means not knightly.
What part of speech is unknightly?
Unknightly is an adjective.

Words near unknightly in the dictionary

  1. unknight
  2. unknighted
  3. unknighting
  4. unknightlike
  5. unknightliness
  6. unknightly
  7. unknights
  8. unknit
  9. unknits
  10. unknittable
  11. unknitted

Source and license

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