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Definition: knight from Philip's Encyclopedia

In medieval Europe, a mounted warrior of intermediate rank. The knight began as a squire and was knighted with a sword touch on the shoulder after a period of trial. Knights were often landholders, owing military service to their overlord. Honorary orders of knighthood, such as the Knights of the Garter (1349), were founded towards the end of the Middle Ages, a tradition that continued into the modern era.


knight

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
in ancient and medieval history, a noble who did military service as a mounted warrior. In ancient history, as in Athens and Rome, the knight was a noble of the second class who in military service had to furnish his own mount and equipment. In Roman society, the knights (Latin equites ) ranked below the senatorial class and above ordinary citizens. A knight forfeited his status if the assessed value of his fortune sank below 400,000 sesterces. In medieval history, the knight was an armed and mounted warrior belonging to the nobility. The incessant private warfare that characterized medieval times brought about a permanent military class, and by the 10th cent. the institution of knighthood was well established. The knight was essentially a military officer, although with the growth of feudalism the term tended to denote the holder of not only a position in the ranks of nobility but also in the ranks of landholders. The knight generally held his lands by military tenure; thus knight…
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Full text Article knight

From Word Origins
The word knight has come up in the world over the centuries. In the Old English period it simply meant ‘boy’ or ‘young man’. By the 10th century it had broadened out to ‘male servant’, and within a hundred years of that we find it being used for ‘military servant, soldier’. This is the general level…
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Full text Article Knights

From Encyclopedia of Warrior Peoples & Fighting Groups Full text Article ENTRIES
Armored troops dominant in warfare of the Middle Ages. Of all the warriors of antiquity, none had a longer career or more of a social, cultural, and political influence on his society than did the European knight. For 700 years knights were the supreme projection of military power on whatever…
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Full text Article knight

From The Chambers Dictionary
a man who has been awarded the rank immediately below baronet, with the title ‘Sir’; in the Middle Ages, a man who performed mounted military service for his lord in exchange for land; in feudal times, a gentleman, bred to arms, admitted to a certain honourable military rank; a man devoted to the…
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Full text Article knight

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
in ancient and medieval history, a noble who did military service as a mounted warrior. In ancient history, as in Athens and Rome, the knight was a noble of the second class who in military service had to furnish his own mount and equipment. In Roman society, the knights (Latin equites ) ranked…
| 739 words
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Full text Article knight

From The Macquarie Dictionary
(in medieval Europe) a. noun /na1t/ /nuyt/ (originally) a mounted soldier serving under a feudal superior. Plural: knights b. noun /na1t/ /nuyt/ (later) a man, usually of noble birth, who, after an apprenticeship as page and squire, was raised to honourable military rank and bound to chivalrous…
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Full text Article knights.

From The Oxford Companion to British History
In continental Europe from the 10th cent. onwards, the term miles (knight) was applied to a mounted warrior usually dependent on a greater lord. *Domesday evidence suggests that this definition is appropriate for the knights of Norman England. Few held much land, and many were maintained within…
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Full text Article knight

From The American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language
a. A medieval tenant giving military service as a mounted man-at-arms to a feudal landholder. b. A medieval gentleman-soldier, usually high-born, raised by a sovereign to privileged military status after training as a page and squire. c. A man holding a nonhereditary title conferred by a sovereign…
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Full text Article knight

From Collins English Dictionary
n 1 in medieval Europe a (originally) a person who served his lord as a mounted and heavily armed soldier b (later) a gentleman invested by a king or other lord with the military and social standing of this rank 2 (in modern times) a person invested by a sovereign with a nonhereditary rank and…
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Full text Article The Knights

From Encyclopedia of Ancient Literature
Also known as: Greek: Hippeis ; Latin: Equites 424 BCE Work Author: Aristophanes The most directly political and perhaps the least theatrical of Aristophanes’ 11 surviving comedies, The Knights mounts a relentlessly rancorous attack on the Athenian politician Cleon—a demagogue whom Aristophanes…
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At the time of the First Crusade (1096), Christian monasticism had been in existence since the third century after Christ. What developed out of the crusade, however, was a unique melding of Christian monasticism with the idea of crusade against the Muslims. The most spectacular result was the…
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