Talk:whit

Is the etymology correct? I don't see the relation between "whit" and "wight". Given that it means "small bit" or "amount" it seems more related to the word "weight". Can anyone shed more light on its derivation? Thebiggnome (talk) 13:48, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

A good point. The OED has its first citation from ante 1450, when <w> and <wh> were surely quite distinct. It is dubious about the etymology and says this:

Etymology: Probably a variant of wight n., although the phonological development is difficult to account for.

An alternative suggestion (O. Jespersen, ‘Symbolic Value of the Vowel i ’, in Philologica 1 (1922) 1–19) takes the word as an extended use of white n. (compare forms at white adj. and n.), perhaps originally meaning ‘a small white spot’, with the selection of the short-vowel variant reflecting a supposed sound-symbolic association with smallness.

--188.28.104.38 13:58, 26 March 2022 (UTC) [goddammit, I'm not signed in and I'm typing this in some weird text-to-wikitext box I've never seen before. Half those links probably won't work. I won't use this again.]