benighted

Etymology

benight +‎ -ed

Adjective

benighted (comparative more benighted, superlative most benighted)

1. plunged into darkness
2. overtaken by night
   • 1936, Robert Frost, Desert Places

     And lonely as it is, that loneliness

     Will be more lonely ere it will be less —

     A blanker whiteness of benighted snow

     With no expression, nothing to express.

3. lacking knowledge or education; unenlightened
   • 185?, Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

     All people knew (or thought they knew) that he had made himself immensely rich; and, for that reason alone, prostrated themselves before him, more degradedly and less excusably than the darkest savage creeps out of his hole in the ground to propitiate, in some log or reptile, the Deity of his benighted soul.

Verb

benighted

1. (archaic) simple past tense and past participle of benight

Anagrams

• benedight, get behind