Other forms: kneeling, knelt, kneels, kneeled
To kneel is to go down and rest your weight on your bent knees. Kneel down, kneel by the bed, she knelt to look underneath.
The past tense is knelt in British English and kneeled in American, and both are understood everywhere. The k is silent. Kneeling is the posture of prayer in many traditions, of being knighted, and of proposing marriage — go down on one knee. It is also a plain practical position for gardening or fixing something low down. Note kneeler, the padded rest in a church pew, and knee-deep, from the same body part.
1verbkneelTo rest your weight on your bent knees.
“She knelt down to see what was under the sofa.”
kneel is a way of lowering the body.
Old English cneowlian is built straight from cneow, knee — the word is simply to knee, with a verb ending. The silent k was pronounced until about the seventeenth century, which is why knee, knife, knight and knot all carry one.
Old English
cnēowlian — to kneel
Middle English
knelen
English, today
kneel
From Middle English knelen, from Old English cnēowlian (“to kneel”), equivalent to knee + le. Cognate with Dutch knielen, Low German knelen, dialectal German knielen, gsw chnüle, Danish knæle, all meaning “to kneel”.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA