Unnumbered source etymology
Original entry ↗A boy; especially, a boy servant. · Any male servant; a menial. · A tricky, deceitful fellow; a dishonest person. · A playing card marked with the figure of a servant or a soldier.
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.
Relationships mentioned by the source
These are extracted mentions, not a timeline or a verified sequence of immediate parents.
Inspect preserved source fields
Raw extraction fields are retained for auditing. Their order does not establish ancestry.
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"expansion": "Middle English knave"
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{
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"4": "",
"5": "child, boy, youth; servant"
},
"expansion": "Old English cnafa (“child, boy, youth; servant”)"
},
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],
[
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],
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[
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],
[
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],
[
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]
],
"references": [],
"descendants": [],
"lexical": [
{
"pos": "noun",
"glosses": [
"A boy; especially, a boy servant.",
"Any male servant; a menial.",
"A tricky, deceitful fellow; a dishonest person.",
"A playing card marked with the figure of a servant or a soldier."
],
"tags": [
"archaic",
"dated"
],
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