klepht

[ kleft ]

noun

1. a Greek or Albanian brigand, exalted in the war of Greek independence as a patriotic robber; guerrilla.

klepht

/ klɛft /

noun

1. any of the Greeks who fled to the mountains after the 15th-century Turkish conquest of Greece and whose descendants survived as brigands into the 19th century

Derived Forms

• ˈklephtic, adjective

Other Words From

• klephtic adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of klepht¹

1810–20; < Modern Greek kléphtēs, variant of Modern Greek, Greek kléptēs thief, rogue; kleptomania

Word History and Origins

Origin of klepht¹

C19: from Modern Greek klephtēs, from Greek kleptēs thief

Example Sentences

Klepht, kleft, n. a Greek or Albanian brigand.

From Project Gutenberg

The dying Klepht bids his companions make him a large and lofty tomb that he may stand therein and load his musket: “Make a window in the side that the swallows may tell me that spring has come, that the nightingales may sing me the approach of flowery May.”

From Project Gutenberg

They breathe the aroma of the forests and mountains; like the early rhapsodies of antiquity, which peopled nature with a thousand forms, they lend a voice to the trees, the rocks, the rivers and to the mountains themselves, which sing the prowess of the Klepht, bewail his death and comfort his disconsolate wife or mother.

From Project Gutenberg

Olympia boasts to Ossa that the footstep of the Turk has never desecrated its valleys; the standard of freedom floats over its springs; there is a Klepht beneath every tree of its forests; an eagle sits on its summit with the head of a warrior in its talons.

From Project Gutenberg

But the guerilla tactics of the wily klepht were powerless against Ibrahim, who marched northward, and, avoiding Nauplia for the present, seized Tripolitsa, and made this the base from which his columns marched to devastate the country far and wide.

From Project Gutenberg