wit

See also: WIT, wit', and wit.

English

Pronunciation

  • enPR: wĭt, IPA(key): /wɪt/
  • Audio (US)(file)
  • Rhymes: -ɪt
  • Homophone: whit (in accents with the wine-whine merger)

Etymology 1

From Middle English wit, from Old English witt (“understanding, intellect, sense, knowledge, consciousness, conscience”), from Proto-Germanic *witją (“knowledge, reason”), from Proto-Indo-European *weyd- (“see, know”). Cognate with Dutch weet, German Witz, Danish vid, Swedish vett, Gothic 𐌿𐌽𐍅𐌹𐍄𐌹 (unwiti, “ignorance”), Latin videō (“see”), Russian ви́деть (vídetʹ). Compare wise.

Noun

wit (countable and uncountable, plural wits)

  1. (now usually in the plural) Sanity.
    He's gone completely out of his wits.
  2. (obsolete usually in the plural) The senses.
  3. Intellectual ability; faculty of thinking, reasoning.
    Where she has gone to is beyond the wit of man to say.
  4. The ability to think quickly; mental cleverness, especially under short time constraints.
    My father had a quick wit and a steady hand.
  5. Intelligence; common sense.
    • 1460-1500, The Towneley Playsː
      I give the wit, I give the strength, of all thou seest, of breadth and length; thou shalt be wonder-wise, mirth and joy to have at will, all thy liking to fulfill, and dwell in paradise.
    • 1609, William Shakespeare, Sonnet 23:
      O, learn to read what silent love hath writ:
      To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.
    The opportunity was right in front of you, and you didn't even have the wit to take it!
  6. Humour, especially when clever or quick.
    The best man's speech was hilarious, full of wit and charm.
    • 1898, Winston Churchill, chapter 8, in The Celebrity:
      The humor of my proposition appealed more strongly to Miss Trevor than I had looked for, and from that time forward she became her old self again; […] . Our table in the dining-room became again the abode of scintillating wit and caustic repartee, Farrar bracing up to his old standard, and the demand for seats in the vicinity rose to an animated competition.
    • 1996 February 4, “Scenes from the Class Struggle in Springfield”, in The Simpsons, season 7, episode 14, written by Jennifer Crittenden:
      Evelyn Peters: "Don't worry, Marge. Her idea of wit is nothing more than an incisive observation humorously phrased and delivered with impeccable timing".
  7. A person who tells funny anecdotes or jokes; someone witty.
    Your friend is quite a wit, isn't he?
    • 1601, Ben Jonson, Poetaster or The Arraignment: […] , London: Printed [by R. Bradock] for M[atthew] L[ownes] […] , published 1602, OCLC 316392309, Act III, scene iv:
      Tuc[ca]. […] Can thy Author doe it impudently enough? / Hiſt[rio]. O, I warrant you, Captaine: and ſpitefully inough too; he ha's one of the moſt ouerflowing villanous wits, in Rome. He will ſlander any man that breathes; If he diſguſt him. / Tucca. I'le know the poor, egregious, nitty Raſcall; and he haue ſuch commendable Qualities, I'le cheriſh him: […]
Synonyms
  • See also Thesaurus:intelligence
Derived terms
Translations

See also

(type of humor):

Etymology 2

From Middle English witen, from Old English witan, from Proto-Germanic *witaną, from Proto-Indo-European *weyd- (“see, know”). Cognate with Icelandic vita, Dutch weten, German wissen, Swedish veta, and Latin videō (“I see”). Doublet of guide.

Verb

wit (see below for this verb’s conjugation)

  1. (transitive, intransitive, chiefly archaic) Know, be aware of (constructed with of when used intransitively).
    You committed terrible actions — to wit, murder and theft — and should be punished accordingly.
    They are meddling in matters that men should not wit of.
    • 1611, King James Version, Exodus 2:3–4:
      And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river's brink. And his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done to him.
    • 1849, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, St. Luke the Painter, lines 5–8
      but soon having wist
      How sky-breadth and field-silence and this day
      Are symbols also in some deeper way,
      She looked through these to God and was God’s priest.
Usage notes
  • As a preterite-present verb, the third-person singular indicative form is not wits but wot; the plural indicative forms conform to the infinitive: we wit, ye wit, they wit.
  • To wit is now defective because it can only be used in the infinitive.
Conjugation
Infinitive to wit
Imperative wit
Present participle witting
Past participle wist
Present indicative Past indicative
First-person singular I wot I wist
Second-person singular thou wost, wot(test) (archaic) thou wist(est) (archaic)
Third-person singular he/she/it wot he/she/it wist
First-person plural we wit(e) we wist
Second-person plural ye wit(e) (archaic) ye wist (archaic)
Third-person plural they wit(e) they wist
Derived terms
Translations

Etymology 3

From English with.

Pronunciation

(Southern American English) (before consonants) IPA(key): /wɪt/, (before yod) /wɪtʃ/

Preposition

wit

  1. (Southern US) Alternative spelling of with

Anagrams

Afrikaans

Etymology

From Dutch wit, from Middle Dutch wit, from Old Dutch *wit, from Proto-Germanic *hwittaz.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /vət/

Adjective

wit (attributive witte, comparative witter, superlative witste)

  1. white

Dutch

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ʋɪt/
  • audio(file)

Etymology 1

From Middle Dutch wit, from Old Dutch *wit, from Proto-Germanic *hwittaz. The geminate is unexpected as the usual Proto-Germanic form is *hwītaz, from Proto-Indo-European *ḱweytos (“shine; bright”). The geminate is sometimes explained as being the result of Kluge's law, thus from a pre-Germanic *kweyd-nos.

Adjective

wit (comparative witter, superlative witst)

  1. white
    De wand is wit.
    The (inner) wall is white.
  2. legal
  3. pure, untainted
  4. (archaic) clear-lighted, not dark at all
    De lang gewenste dag verscheen, heel klaar en wit.
    The long-wished-for day appeared, very clear and white.
Usage notes

Recently, wit has come to be used by some (associated with social justice movements) to refer to a specific skin colour, i.e. to light-skinned people of apparent mostly European descent. Traditionally, the adjective blank has been used for this purpose, and this usage remains by far the most widespread.

Inflection
Inflection of wit
uninflected wit
inflected witte
comparative witter
positive comparative superlative
predicative/adverbial witwitterhet witst
het witste
indefinite m./f. sing. wittewitterewitste
n. sing. witwitterwitste
plural wittewitterewitste
definite wittewitterewitste
partitive witswitters—
Synonyms
Antonyms
Derived terms
  • wijting

Noun

wit n (plural witten, diminutive witje n)

  1. (uncountable) white (color)
    Wit is alle kleuren ineens.
    White is all colors at once.
  2. (archaic) (short for doelwit (“goal, target, the white in a bullseye”)
    Myn wit is Adam en zyn afkomst te bederven. (in Lucifer, by Vondel)
    My goal is to corrupt Adam and his origin.
  3. (slang) cocaine
    • 2011, Esther Schenk, Straatwaarde, Luitingh-Sijthoff B.V., →ISBN.
      Op de Baan verschijnen dealers die gekookte coke aanbieden. Dat is het ei van Columbus. Nu hoef ik niet meer met mijn wit eerst naar huis om het te gaan koken.
      (please add an English translation of this quote)
    • 2014, Helen Vreeswijk, Overdosis, Unieboek | Het Spectrum, →ISBN.
      ‘Je bestelde ook een halfje wit’, hield De Main hem voor. ‘Wat is dat dan?’
    Heb je een halfje wit?
    Do you have a dose of cocaine? (The phrase halfje wit normally means "half a loaf of white bread".)
Derived terms
Descendants

Verb

wit

  1. first-, second- and third-person singular present indicative of witten
  2. imperative of witten

See also

Colors in Dutch · kleuren (layout · text)
     wit      grijs      zwart      bruin
             roze              rood ; karmijnrood              oranje              geel ; roomwit
             groengeel/limoengroen              groen                           blauwgroen/cyaan ; groenblauw/petrolblauw
             azuurblauw              blauw              violet ; indigo              magenta ; paars

Etymology 2

From Middle Dutch wit. Ultimately from Proto-Germanic *witją (“knowledge, reason”), from Proto-Indo-European *weyd- (“see, know”). Related to weten (“to know”), wis (“knowledge”) and wijs (“wise”). Cognate with English wit, German Witz.

Noun

wit n (plural witten, diminutive witje n)

  1. (archaic) ability to think and reason
  2. (archaic) knowledge

Anagrams

Gothic

Romanization

wit

  1. Romanization of 𐍅𐌹𐍄

Javanese

Noun

wit

  1. tree

Louisiana Creole French

Etymology

From French huit.

Numeral

wit

  1. (cardinal) eight

Mauritian Creole

Mauritian Creole cardinal numbers
 <  7 8 9  > 
    Cardinal : wit
    Ordinal : witiem

Etymology

From French huit.

Numeral

wit

  1. (cardinal) eight

Middle Dutch

Etymology

From Old Dutch *wit, from Proto-Germanic *hwittaz. The long-vowel variant wijt is from Old Dutch wīt, from Proto-Germanic *hwītaz.

Adjective

wit

  1. white
  2. clean
  3. pale (of skin)

Inflection

This adjective needs an inflection-table template.

Alternative forms

Descendants

Further reading

  • “wit”, in Vroegmiddelnederlands Woordenboek, 2000
  • “wit (I)”, in Middelnederlandsch Woordenboek, 1929

Middle English

Alternative forms

Etymology

from Old English wit (“we twain”).

Pronoun

wit (accusative unk, genitive unker, possessive determiner unker)

  1. First-person dual pronoun: we twain, the two of us.

See also

  • we (first-person plural pronoun)

References

Old English

Etymology

From Proto-Germanic *wet, from Proto-Indo-European *wed-, a suffixed form of *wei- (see wē). Cognate with Old Norse vit, Gothic 𐍅𐌹𐍄 (wit), and Lithuanian vèdu.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /wit/

Pronoun

wit (personal)

  1. We two; nominative dual form of iċ.

Old French

Numeral

wit

  1. eight

Old High German

Etymology

From Proto-Germanic *wīdaz, whence also Old Saxon wīt, Old English wīd and Old Norse víðr.

Adjective

wīt

  1. wide

Descendants

Old Saxon

Etymology

From Proto-Germanic *wet. Accusative from Proto-Germanic *unk, dative from *unkiz.

Pronoun

wit

  1. we two

Declension

Tok Pisin

Etymology

From English wheat.

Noun

wit

  1. wheat
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