knighting

Pluralknightings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of knight.

   Knighting the pawn instead of making it a queen gave her an immediate check.

   Critics accused the prime minister of knighting his political allies.

   Note

   Two quite different objects take this verb: a person raised to knighthood, and a pawn promoted to a knight in chess, where knighting a pawn is the alternative to queening it. In both uses the form keeps its direct object; without one, the word is usually the noun for the ceremony, which has a plural, knightings.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   The act of conferring the rank and title of knight on a person.

   The singer's knighting surprised fans who remembered his rebellious early years.

   Guests rehearsed their bows in the hallway before the knighting ceremony began.

   Note

   The noun covers both the medieval rite and the modern honor, and it often stands before another noun, as in a knighting ceremony. Nigel Saul's Chivalry in Medieval England (2011) says the grandest knightings were occasions of some grandeur. Today a knighting can be a political decision people argue over: Julia Baird reported in 2015 that only 14 percent of Australians agreed with one that dismayed Prime Minister Abbott's colleagues.

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