Cniht

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A young male person in Old English, often a boy or youth ; a servant or attendant serving a lord or household ; a warrior or retainer bound to fight for a superior
2. In Old English, a lad or young man ; someone who waits on a master as a servant or attendant ; a soldier or follower sworn to serve a lord in battle
3. An Old English term for a boy or youth ; a household servant or attendant ; a fighting man or retainer who owed military service to a lord

Etymology: Old English "cniht" meant a boy or young man, especially a youth in training to serve a lord, and it had nothing to do with knights in armour. The word was only later narrowed to the warrior-servant sense that English speakers now associate with it. Its meaning shifted over the centuries until, in its modern form "knight," it referred to a mounted military retainer of high rank. The surprise is in the spelling. Old English had a sound written "cn" at the start of a word, pronounced with a hard k before the n, and the k sound was lost in pronunciation over time, leaving "knight" with a silent k. The same thing happened to "knee," "know," and "knife," which all once began with a pronounced k. The "gh" in "knight" was a guttural sound, like the ch in Scottish "loch," that disappeared later in English, leaving the spelling behind as a fossil. Cognates in other Germanic languages show the word's older sense more clearly. German "Knecht" still means a servant or farmhand, which points back to the same idea of a young male attendant rather than a fighting noble. The word's journey from servant to aristocrat happened entirely within English and its relatives, through the feudal period.

Synonyms: youth, servant, attendant