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Gulliver’s Travels vocabulary
9 outdated vocabulary words
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knave
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synonyms: blackguard, cur, varlet, carle, blighter, villiago, human paraquat ???
tags: [dated]
► definition
Definition:1. A boy; especially, a boy servant. [Obs.]2. Any male servant; a menial. [Obs.]3. A tricky, deceitful fellow; a dishonest person; a rogue; a villain.Noah Webster. Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1913)
► uses
Uses:
“You knave, do you think you acted like a gentleman, speaking to me like that in front of my granddaughter?”
Maya Angelou. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)
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She spoke with the imperious curtness of a princess of the Middle Ages giving instructions to one of the scullions or scurvy knaves on her payroll,
P. G. Wodehouse. The Girl in Blue, p.15 (1971)
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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.
Jonathan Swift. Gulliver's Travels Into Several Remote Regions of the World (1726)
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Petruchio: Villain, I say, knock me at this gate,
And rap me well, or I’ll knock your knave’s pate.
William Shakespeare. The Taming of the Shrew
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"How many serving lads must have been unfaithful and dishonest before knave -which meant at first no more than boy -- acquired the meaning which it has now !"
Trench.
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Still less could Levin say that he was a knave, as Sviazhsky was unmistakably an honest, good-hearted, sensible man, who worked good-humoredly, keenly, and perseveringly at his work;
Leo Tolstoy. Anna Karenina (Translated by Constance Garnett)
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t’fooil gangs banning und raving to his cham’er, makking dacent fowks dig thur fingers i’ thur lugs fur varry shame; un’ the knave, why he can caint his brass, un’ ate, un’ sleep, un’ off to his neighbour’s to gossip wi’ t’ wife.
Emily Brontë. Wuthering Heights (1847)
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