wit

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See also: WIT, wit', and wit.

English

Pronunciation

Etymology 1

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(deprecated template usage)

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, Norwegian Bokmål 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, plural only) 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.
    The opportunity was right in front of you, and you didn't even have the wit to take it!
    • 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[1]:
      O, learn to read what silent love hath writ:
      To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.
  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, Jennifer Crittenden, “Scenes from the Class Struggle in Springfield”, in The Simpsons, season 7, episode 14, production code 3F13:
      Evelyn Peters: "Don't worry, Marge. Her idea of wit is nothing more than an incisive observation humorously phrased and delivered with impeccable timing".
    • 1991, Stephen Fry, The Liar, p. 37:
      ...the cemetery—which people of shattering wit like Sampson never tired of calling ‘the dead centre of town’...
  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: […] [R. Bradock] for M[atthew] L[ownes] […], published 1602, →OCLC, Act III:
      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
Derived terms
Terms derived from wit

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Translations

See also

(type of humor):

Etymology 2

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(deprecated template usage)

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”). Compare guide.

Verb

wit (see below for this verb’s conjugation)

  2. (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 with.

Pronunciation

  • Lua error in Module:parameters at line 370: Parameter 1 should be a valid language or etymology language code; the value "Southern American English" is not valid. See WT:LOL and WT:LOL/E. (before consonants) IPA(key): /wɪt/, (before yod) /wɪtʃ/

Preposition

wit

  1. (Southern US) Pronunciation spelling of with.

Anagrams

Afrikaans

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

Adjective

wit (attributive witte, comparative witter, superlative witste)

  1. white

Balinese

Noun

wit

  1. tree
    Wénten wit poh akéh ring Nagara.
    There are many mango trees in Nagara.

Dutch

Pronunciation

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. (chiefly Surinam) having a white skin colour, light-skinned (see usage note)
  3. (Surinam) having a relatively light skin colour
  4. legal
  5. pure, untainted
  6. (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 in continental Dutch 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 there for this purpose, and this usage is by far the most widespread in the Netherlands and Belgium.

Inflection
Declension of wit
uninflected wit
inflected witte
comparative witter
positive comparative superlative
predicative/adverbial wit witter het witst
het witste
indefinite m./f. sing. witte wittere witste
n. sing. wit witter witste
plural witte wittere witste
definite witte wittere witste
partitive wits witters —
Synonyms
Antonyms
Derived terms

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 quotation)
    • 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
  • Afrikaans: wit

Verb

wit

  1. (deprecated template usage) first-, second- and third-person singular present indicative of witten
  2. (deprecated template usage) imperative of witten

See also

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

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
    Akèh wit pelem ing Semarang.
    There are many mango trees in Semarang.

Louisiana Creole French

Etymology

From French huit.

Numeral

wit

  1. eight

Mauritian Creole

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

Etymology

From French huit.

Numeral

wit

  1. 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

Middle English

Alternative forms

Etymology

from Old English wit (“we two”), from Proto-Germanic *wet.

Pronunciation

Pronoun

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

  1. (Early Middle English) First-person dual pronoun: we twain, the two of us.

See also

  • we (first-person plural pronoun)

References

North Frisian

Etymology

From Old Frisian hwīt, from Proto-Germanic *hwītaz. Compare West Frisian wyt.

Pronunciation

IPA(key): /vɪt/

Adjective

wit

  1. (Sylt) white

Old English

Alternative forms

  • ƿit — wynn spelling

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

Pronoun

wit (personal)

  1. we two; nominative dual 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; nominative dual of ik

Declension

Old Saxon personal pronouns
Personal pronouns
Singular 1. 2. 3. m 3. f 3. n
Nominative ik thū hē siu it
Accusative mī, me, mik thī, thik ina sia
Dative mī thī imu iru it
Genitive mīn thīn is ira is
Dual 1. 2. - - -
Nominative wit git - - -
Accusative unk ink - - -
Dative
Genitive unkero, unka

inker, inka

- - -
Plural 1. 2. 3. m 3. f 3. n
Nominative wī, we gī, ge sia sia siu
Accusative ūs, unsik eu, iu, iuu
Dative ūs im
Genitive ūser euwar, iuwer, iuwar, iuwero, iuwera iro

Tok Pisin

Etymology

From English wheat.

Noun

wit

  1. wheat
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