Chiefless

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Without a chief; leaderless. not-comparable

    "No great clan held rule there; it was filled and disputed by small septs, and broken remnants, and what they call "chiefless folk," driven into the wild country about the springs of Forth and Teith by the advance of the Campbells."

Example

More examples

"No great clan held rule there; it was filled and disputed by small septs, and broken remnants, and what they call "chiefless folk," driven into the wild country about the springs of Forth and Teith by the advance of the Campbells."

Etymology

From chief + -less. Piecewise doublet of chefless and headless.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.