Meanings
adjectivechiefless (not comparable)
- not comparableWithout a chief; leaderless.
No great clan held rule there; it was filled and disputed by small septs, and broken remnants, and what they call "chiefless folk," driven into the wild country about the springs of Forth and Teith by the advance of the Campbells.
1886 May 1 – July 31, Robert Louis Stevenson, “In Balquidder”, in Kidnapped, being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751: […], London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 1886, →OCLC, page 250
Origin
From chief + -less. Piecewise doublet of chefless and headless.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
APA
chiefless. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/chiefless
MLA
“chiefless.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/chiefless. Accessed November 2, 2026.
Chicago
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “chiefless,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/chiefless.
Source: chiefless on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.