chieftaincy
/ˈtʃiːftənsi/noun
chieftaincy is a noun meaning “The position or period of rule of a chief” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled C-H-I-E-F-T-A-I-N-C-Y, and it appears about once in every 19 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of chieftaincy is chieftaincies.
What does chieftaincy mean?
noun
- 1
The position or period of rule of a chief.
- 2
The area or population ruled by a chief.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce chieftaincy?
- UK /ˈtʃiːftənsi/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of chieftaincy
- chieftaincies plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is chieftaincy?
Chieftaincy appears about once in every 19 million words in written English, the 130,282nd most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does chieftaincy come from?
From chieftain + -cy. Piecewise doublet of captaincy.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).