chieftain
Americannoun
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chieftains
plural
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the chief of a clan or a tribe.
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a leader of a group, band, etc..
the robbers' chieftain.
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Military. Chieftain, Britain's main battle tank since 1969, fitted with a 120 mm gun and two machine guns and weighing 55 tons (50 metric tons).
noun
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the head or leader of a tribe or clan
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the chief of a group of people
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of chieftain
First recorded in 1275–1325; Middle English cheftayne, variant of chevetaine, from Old French, from Late Latin capitāneus “chief”; see captain
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
“What were we supposed to do? Watch them get slaughtered and be silent?” said Muwaffaq Tarif, the spiritual chieftain of the 150,000-strong Druze community in Israel.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 21, 2025
Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Teódulo Franco Bahamonde—Gen. Franco to you and me; Caudillo de España, or chieftain of Spain, to his countrymen—died on Nov. 20, 1975.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 28, 2025
Charity Adams, changed back to “Fort Lee,” I can only imagine how the SCV and others would respond to a re-renaming after any Lee other than their holy Confederate chieftain.
From Slate ● Feb. 12, 2025
For the past few months, as the mercenary chieftain Yevgeny V. Prigozhin escalated his feud with the Russian military, Mr. Putin did not publicly reveal any discomfort with his diatribes.
From New York Times ● Jun. 24, 2023
Right through the press drove Théoden Thengel’s son, and his spear was shivered as he threw down their chieftain.
From "The Return of the King" by J.R.R. Tolkien
Zero rates took the pressure off corporate chieftains to restructure, innovate, and take risks, as Japan Inc. did before QE arrived.
From Barron's ● Dec. 17, 2025
On the other hand, the possibly revolutionary impact from artificial intelligence argues that maybe it is still early days, no matter how abrasively these chieftains behave.
From MarketWatch ● Nov. 5, 2025
Crypto kings, billionaires needing agency approvals, felons buying pardons, AI chieftains on the prowl.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 23, 2025
Porter’s national prominence grew when, during congressional hearings, she grilled Trump administration officials and corporate chieftains using her whiteboard to make esoteric policy understandable.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 11, 2025
Accordingly, the two greatest of the chieftains left alive by then, Odysseus and Diomedes, determined to try to steal it.
From "Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes" by Edith Hamilton
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