- 1酋長；氏族首領
A chieftain is the leader of a tribe, or of a Scottish clan — a large family group that shares a name and a long history. People also stretch the word a little: a pirate chieftain, a rebel chieftain, the chieftain of a mountain people. It sounds older and more story-like than leader or boss, and a step more formal than chief, though the two are close. In Scotland it can still be a real title, though actually a lot of the old power is gone and the role is often about tradition and the family name. Do not mix it up with captain. Captain is a family word, from the same Latin root meaning head, but a captain leads a ship, a company, or a team, not a tribe.
組成From Middle English cheveteyn / cheftayne, from Old French chevetaine, from Late Latin capitaneus (the same word that gave English captain), from Latin caput, head. So both chieftain and captain are “head” words. It is a doublet of captain, and it is related to chief.
原始詞典資料2 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
chieftainnoun/ˈt͡ʃiːf.tən/
- 1
A leader of a clan or tribe.
- VI. THE PUYUMA GROUP. The tribes belonging to this group occupy the plains in Hinan and that neighbourhood, and call themselves "Puyumas," but the Chinese call them the "Hinan Savages". The Puyumas formed a very powerful State some 300 years ago, and united under one single rule as many as seventy isolated tribes scattered over the land, stretching from Hakusekikwaku and Seikoko to Harogwai in the southern part of the island, and were at one time so powerful that the chieftain was called by foreigners "The King of Hinan".
- They were probably the work of individual craftsmen working to meet the chieftains' needs. Their place in the chronology of the big cemeteries is indicated by the less richly-decorated double-springed bronze brooches which are found here.
- 2
A leader of a group.
- The robber chieftain divided up the spoils.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。