Past tense and past participle of kneel, meaning to go down or rest on one's knees.
From Old English cnēowlian, related to cnēow (knee). The word evolved through Middle English knelen, with the past tense form following the pattern of irregular verbs like dealt and felt.
Knelt is one of those verbs that sounds almost onomatopoeic - the sharp consonant cluster seems to echo the decisive action of dropping to one's knees. Interestingly, both 'knelt' and 'kneeled' are acceptable past tenses, but 'knelt' is more common in formal writing.
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