chiefless en · ADJ
Etymology
From chief + -less. Piecewise doublet of chefless and headless.
Meanings
-
(not-comparable) Without a chief; leaderless.
No great clan held rule there; it was filled and disputed by small septs, and broken remnants, and what they call "chiefless folk," driven into the wild country about the springs of Forth and Teith by the advance of the Campbells.
1886 May 1 – July 31, Robert Louis Stevenson, “In Balquidder”, in Kidnapped, being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751: […], London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 1886, →OCLC, page 250: