Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The quality or habit of being knavish; trickery; dishonesty.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The quality or state of being knavish; knavery; dishonesty.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The quality of being knavish.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

knavish +‎ -ness

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Examples

  • To such a state have we free-born men, men who came out but to see the elephant, been reduced, by the asinine stupidity of the Government, by the impudence and knavishness of its officials.

    Australia Felix 2003

  • Had Scarlett been possessed of such an anger, she would have been stamping both feet and roaring like Gerald in his finest days, calling on God to witness the accursed duplicity and knavishness of mankind and uttering blood-curdling threats of retaliation.

    Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell 1996

  • Had Scarlett been possessed of such an anger, she would have been stamping both feet and roaring like Gerald in his finest days, calling on God to witness the accursed duplicity and knavishness of mankind and uttering blood-curdling threats of retaliation.

    Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell 1996

  • Had Scarlett been possessed of such an anger, she would have been stamping both feet and roaring like Gerald in his finest days, calling on God to witness the accursed duplicity and knavishness of mankind and uttering blood-curdling threats of retaliation.

    Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell 1996

  • Had Scarlett been possessed of such an anger, she would have been stamping both feet and roaring like Gerald in his finest days, calling on God to witness the accursed duplicity and knavishness of mankind and uttering blood-curdling threats of retaliation.

    Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell 1996

  • Had Scarlett been possessed of such an anger, she would have been stamping both feet and roaring like Gerald in his finest days, calling on God to witness the accursed duplicity and knavishness of mankind and uttering blood-curdling threats of retaliation.

    Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell 1996

  • The genial knavishness of her father had never appeared as such to her.

    The Yoke A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt Elizabeth Miller

  • That helps you to distinguish real knavishness from childish faults.

    Father Payne Benson, Arthur C. 1915

  • He had endeavoured to dissuade the king from signing it and had written as follows to the Cardinals of Bourbon and Lorraine: "The King will have more to fear from the hidden traps and knavishness of the heretics than from their barefaced brigandage during the war."

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 13: Revelation-Stock 1840-1916 1913

  • While denying his knavishness, it had the singular appearance of developing his foolishness.

    A belle of the fifties : memoirs of Mrs. Clay, of Alabama, covering social and political life in Washington and the South, 1853-66, 1905

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