chief

1. 1.

   most important element

   “the chief aim of living”

   “the main doors were of solid glass”

   “the principal rivers of America”

   “the principal example”

   “policemen were primary targets”

   “the master bedroom”

   “a master switch”

   Synonymsmainprimaryprincipalmaster

   Similarimportant

Other forms of chief

plural

chiefs·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about chief

What does chief mean?

chief means "a person who is in charge". That is the primary sense; the word has 4 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in chief?

chief has 1 syllable: chief. In IPA it is /ˈtʃif/.

What is another word for chief?

Close synonyms include head, top dog, foreman, gaffer, honcho. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is chief a common word?

chief is banded "Core" — among the few thousand words that carry most english. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.