caitiff
Americannoun
adjective
noun
adjective
Etymology
Origin of caitiff
1250–1300; Middle English caitif < Anglo-French < Latin captīvus captive
Vocabulary lists containing caitiff
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.
If a celebrated classroom caitiff like Peck's Bad Boy or Huckleberry Finn were to cut his swath through a U. S. school today, he would probably get off with a restrained scolding.
From Time Magazine Archive
Alas, caitiff that I am, why did I leave the place whereto I was appointed and wherein I had come to my old age?
From Tales from the Old French by Various
Then to the green wood, caitiff, haste away: There take your chance to live—for Truth must say, We have no right, for theft, to hang up Tray.
From The Poems of Philip Freneau, Volume II (of III) by Philip Freneau
The caitiff who had undersold them was in the village at that moment!
From The Woodlands Orchids by Frederick Boyle
"Margaret, they are but a blind: Giles says so: no matter, the old caitiff shall never see them again; I will not go till I have hidden his treasure where he shall never find it."
From The Cloister and the Hearth A Tale of the Middle Ages by Charles Reade
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
