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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

nief.

A serf or bondsman born into servitude.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/niːf/
  1. A serf or bondsman born into servitude.

    historical
Where this word comes from

From Old French [Term?], from Latin nativus (“natural”). Doublet of naif and native.

noun/niːf/
  1. A clenched hand; fist.

    Ireland · Northern-England · Scotland
  2. A handful or fistful.

    Ireland · Northern-England · Scotland
  3. The handgrip of a sword or oar.

    Ireland · Northern-England · Scotland
Where this word comes from

From Middle English neve (“the clenched hand, fist”), from Old Norse nefi, hnefi (also knefi) ("hand, fist, handful"), from Proto-Germanic *hnefô, from Proto-Indo-European *knep- (“to scrape, scratch, grind”), from Proto-Indo-European *ken- (“to scratch, scrape”). Cognate with Scots neif (“fist”), Norwegian neve, Danish næve, Swedish näve, Middle High German nevemez (“handful”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.