Knyght

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A mounted medieval warrior of noble birth ; a man given an honorary title by a sovereign ; a horse-shaped piece in chess ; to formally confer that title on someone
2. An armored horseman sworn to serve a lord ; one who receives a monarch's honour and title ; the horse-headed piece in the game of chess ; to dub someone with that rank
3. A medieval cavalry soldier serving a feudal lord ; a person awarded a royal honorary title ; a chess piece that moves in an L-shape ; to bestow the title formally

Etymology: The spelling "knyght" is simply an older form of "knight," with the "gh" a Middle English way of writing the sound that had once been pronounced in the word. The word's earliest ancestor was Old English "cniht," which meant "boy" or "servant" long before it came to mean a mounted warrior. A knight, in other words, began as a youth in someone's household, and the sense of a military rank grew out of that service relationship. The Old English form descends from a Proto-West Germanic "*kneht," a reconstructed ancestor shared by the early Germanic languages on the continent. Its German cousin, Middle High German "knehten," shows the same root and the same sense of a young man or attendant. The word's journey from a general term for a servant to a title of chivalry happened entirely within the medieval English-speaking world, not through Latin or French.