Library / English Dictionary

KNEEL

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

Irregular inflected form: knelt   

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Supporting yourself on your knees

Synonyms:

kneel; kneeling

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Hypernyms ("kneel" is a kind of...):

motility; motion; move; movement (a change of position that does not entail a change of location)

Derivation:

kneel (rest one's weight on one's knees)

 II. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Rest one's weight on one's knees

Example:

In church you have to kneel during parts of the service

Classified under:

Verbs of touching, hitting, tying, digging

Hypernyms (to "kneel" is one way to...):

rest (not move; be in a resting position)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s
Somebody ----s PP

Sentence examples:

The children kneel in the rocking chair

There kneel some children in the rocking chair

Derivation:

kneel (supporting yourself on your knees)

kneeler (a board (sometimes cushioned) for someone to kneel on)

kneeler (a person in a kneeling position)

kneeling (supporting yourself on your knees)

Credits

 Context examples: 

Captain Wentworth, who had caught her up, knelt with her in his arms, looking on her with a face as pallid as her own, in an agony of silence.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

He kneels, he prays, he implores!

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

She knelt in spirit to her uncle, and her bosom swelled to utter, “Oh, not to him! Look so to all the others, but not to him!”

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

When Lord Avon had left him, the captain remained for some time in a kneeling attitude, with his face sunk upon a chair.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Thornton knelt down by Buck’s side.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

I knelt beside him for some minutes, and then made my way to Mr. Turner’s lodge-keeper, his house being the nearest, to ask for assistance.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Kneeling or leaning your elbows on a hard surface for a long time can make bursitis start.

(Bursitis, NIH: National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases)

For coming through the narrows, we had to lie very near the southern point, and there we saw all three of them kneeling together on a spit of sand, with their arms raised in supplication.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

I kneeled down, and they raised a ladder from the ground to my neck; upon this ladder one of them mounted, and let fall a plumb-line from my collar to the floor, which just answered the length of my coat: but my waist and arms I measured myself.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

And all the time I must help up the man and woman. Sometimes they rise to their knees and fall forward, maybe four or five times before they can get to their feet again and stagger two or three steps and fall. But always do they fall forward. Standing or kneeling, always do they fall forward, gaining on the trail each time by the length of their bodies.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)