KNAVE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does knave mean? 

• KNAVE (noun)
  The noun KNAVE has 2 senses:

1. a deceitful and unreliable scoundrel

2. one of four face cards in a deck bearing a picture of a young prince

  Familiarity information: KNAVE used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• KNAVE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A deceitful and unreliable scoundrel

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

knave; rapscallion; rascal; rogue; scalawag; scallywag; varlet

Hypernyms ("knave" is a kind of...):

scoundrel; villain (a wicked or evil person; someone who does evil deliberately)

Sense 2

Meaning:

One of four face cards in a deck bearing a picture of a young prince

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Synonyms:

jack; knave

Hypernyms ("knave" is a kind of...):

court card; face card; picture card (one of the twelve cards in a deck bearing a picture of a face)

 Context examples 

Waste not your shafts upon such runagate knaves.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Tell me honestly"—a deeper glow overspreading his cheeks—"do you think me most a knave or a fool?

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

His head was not strong: the knaves he lived amongst fooled him beyond anything I ever heard.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Thornton Lacey was the name of his impending living, as Miss Crawford well knew; and her interest in a negotiation for William Price's knave increased.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

“My first master will succeed me—I am in earnest at last—so you'll soon have to arrange our contracts, and to bind us firmly to them, like a couple of knaves.”

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Ah, said the wife, the poor knave came in the storm and rain, and begged for shelter, so I gave him a bit of bread and cheese, and showed him where the straw was.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

They look upon fraud as a greater crime than theft, and therefore seldom fail to punish it with death; for they allege, that care and vigilance, with a very common understanding, may preserve a man’s goods from thieves, but honesty has no defence against superior cunning; and, since it is necessary that there should be a perpetual intercourse of buying and selling, and dealing upon credit, where fraud is permitted and connived at, or has no law to punish it, the honest dealer is always undone, and the knave gets the advantage.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Now, as to the other knave.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Miss Crawford, a little suspicious and resentful of a certain tone of voice, and a certain half-look attending the last expression of his hope, made a hasty finish of her dealings with William Price; and securing his knave at an exorbitant rate, exclaimed, There, I will stake my last like a woman of spirit.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

I could plainly discover whence one family derives a long chin; why a second has 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; whence it came, what Polydore Virgil says of a certain great house, Nec vir fortis, nec foemina casta; how cruelty, falsehood, and cowardice, grew to be characteristics by which certain families are distinguished as much as by their coats of arms; who first brought the pox into a noble house, which has lineally descended scrofulous tumours to their posterity.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)