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Webster 1913 Edition


Knightless

Knight′less

,
Adj.
Unbecoming a knight.
[Obs.]
Knightless guile.”
Spenser.

Definition 2024


knightless

knightless

English

Adjective

knightless (comparative more knightless, superlative most knightless)

  1. (rare, obsolete) Unbecoming of a knight; unchivalrous. [16th-18th c.]
    • 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, VI.6:
      Whereof thou […] all knights hast shamed with this knightlesse part.
  2. (not comparable) Without a knight.
    • 1890, Ouida, Othmar. Friendship. And other stories (page 545)
      This night, when the Lady Joan sternly bade her knight attend the knightless damsels to their home, Ioris obeyed.
    • 2005, Eric Schiller, The Rubinstein Attack!: A Chess Opening Strategy for White, page 28:
      Janowski vs. Jaffe Match, New York, 1917 / Classical Tartakower / Knightless middlegame, queenside strategy
    • 2010, Dennis W. Shepherd, The Papaw Diary (page 300)
      The knightless armor moved toward Rocky. When it was just a few feet away, the visor of the helmet opened and the loudest and scariest shriek anyone could every[sic] imagine came out of the helmet.
    • 2012, Jonathan H. Grossman, Charles Dickens's Networks: Public Transport and the Novel (page 220)
      shining the heroics of a latterday Don Quixote upon a knightless age