knave

noun

Etymology: From Middle English knave, knafe, from Old English cnafa (“child, boy, youth; servant”), from Proto-West Germanic *knabō. Cognate to Dutch knaap and German Knabe.

1. A boy; especially, a boy servant.
2. Any male servant; a menial.

   “Many a duteous and knee-crooking knave that, doting on his own obsequious bondage, wears out his time, much like his master's ass, For naught but provender, and when he's old – cashier'd! Whip me such honest knaves.”

3. A tricky, deceitful fellow; a dishonest person.

   “I could plainly diſcover from whence one Family derives a long Chin; why a ſecond hath abounded with Knaves for two Generations, and Fools for two more; why a third happened to be crack-brained, and a fourth to be Sharpers.”

   “He was a man whom scarcely any amount of fortune could have benefited permanently, and who was made to be ruined, to cheat small tradesmen, to be the victim of astuter sharpers: to be niggardly and reckless, and as destitute of honesty as the people who cheated him, and a dupe, chiefly because he was too mean to be a successful knave.”

4. A playing card marked with the figure of a servant or a soldier.