Knave
noun ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A boy; especially, a boy servant. archaic
- 2 one of four face cards in a deck bearing a picture of a young prince wordnet
- 3 Any male servant; a menial. archaic
"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."
- 4 a deceitful and unreliable scoundrel wordnet
- 5 A tricky, deceitful fellow; a dishonest person. dated
"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."
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- 6 A playing card marked with the figure of a servant or a soldier.
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"Though this knave came something saucily into the world before he was sent for, yet was his mother fair; there was good sport at his making, and the whoreson must be acknowledged."
Etymology
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.
Related phrases
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.