niddering
/ˈnɪdəɹɪŋ/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
9
Letters
3
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "‘Now will I have at thee as a base kern and niddering,’ roared the knight."
- "[O]n the bodies of his fallen foes he kicked the gray road dust, and spat on them and named them churls and nidderings and unfit wearers of the mail of men of war."
- "I require of thee, as a man of thy word, on pain of being held faithless, man-sworn, and nidering [footnote: Infamous], to forgive and to receive to thy paternal affection the good knight, Wilfrid of Ivanhoe."
- "Though thou art my son, I say this, that, if thou workest ill to Eric when he is over sea, thou shalt rightly learn the weight of Whitefire: it is a niddering deed to plot against an absent man."
Etymology
A variant of nithing, resulting from the letter eth (ð) in Early Middle English niðing in the writings of the English historian William of Malmesbury (c. 1095 – c. 1143) being mistaken for a d followed by a mark of suspension representing a letter that had been omitted as an abbreviation. This led to niðing being wrongly spelled as nidering in early printed versions of his works. The word was later popularized by the Scottish novelist and poet Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832).
Word Breakdown
- Root: *neyH-
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈnɪdəɹɪŋ/
- British English: /ˈnɪdəɹɪŋ/
Usage
Inflected Forms
nidderings (plural)
nidering (alternative)
more niddering (comparative)
most niddering (superlative)