bight

English

From Middle English bight, biȝt, byȝt (also bought, bowght, bouȝt; see bought), from Old English byht (“bend, angle, corner; bay, bight”), from Proto-West Germanic *buhti, from Proto-Germanic *buhtiz (“bend, curve”), from Proto-Germanic *beuganą (“to bend, bow”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰewgʰ- (“to bend”).

Cognates

Cognate with North Frisian boch, bocht, bucht (“bay, bight, gulf”), Saterland Frisian Bucht (“bay, bight, gulf”), West Frisian bocht (“bay, bight, gulf”), Dutch bocht (“bay, bight”), German Bucht (“bay, bight, gulf”), Icelandic bót (“bight, cove, small bay”); also Albanian butë (“soft, flabby”), Ukrainian бга́ти (bháty, “to crumple, twist”), Sanskrit भुज् (bhuj, “to bend, curve; to sweep”).

bight (plural bights)

A corner, bend, or angle; a hollow
the bight of a horse's knee

the bight of an elbow
- 1905, Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, page 166:
  I spied a bight of meadow some way below the roadway in an angle of the river.
(geography) An area of sea lying between two promontories, larger than a bay, wider than a gulf.
(geography) A bend or curve in a coastline, river, or other geographical feature.
A curve in a rope.
- 1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part I:
  I could see every rib, the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his neck, and all were connected together with a chain whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking.

bend

large bay

curve

bight (third-person singular simple present bights, present participle bighting, simple past and past participle bighted)