tight
/taɪt/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.57 in modern English
9
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Firmly held together; compact; not loose or open.
adj
Firmly held together; compact; not loose or open.
adj
Firmly held together; compact; not loose or open.
adj
Narrow, such that it is difficult for something or someone to pass through it.
Example Sentences
- "a tight sponge; a tight knot"
- "Pull your seatbelts tight before takeoff."
- "tight control on a situation"
- "Make sure to pull the rope tight."
- "The face which emerged was not reassuring. It was blunt and grey, the nose springing thick and flat from high on the frontal bone of the forehead, whilst his eyes were narrow slits of dark in a tight bandage of tissue. […]."
- "The only negative from a comfortable first-half was the sight of Aston Villa’s Nathan Delfouneso being withdrawn with a tight hamstring after only 11 minutes."
Etymology
From Middle English tight, tyght, tyȝt, tiht, variants of thight, thiht, from Old English *þiht, *þīht (attested in meteþiht), from Proto-West Germanic *þį̄ht(ī), from Proto-Germanic *þinhtaz, from Proto-Indo-European *tenkt- (“dense, thick, tight”), from Proto-Indo-European *ten- (“to stretch, pull”). Cognate with Scots ticht, West Frisian ticht, Danish tæt, Icelandic þéttur (“dense”), Norwegian tett, Swedish tät, Dutch dicht (“dense”), German dicht (“dense”). The current form with t- /t/ rather than etymologically-expected th- /θ/ arose in Middle English under the influence of the etymologically-unrelated verbs tighten and tight, which come from a different Proto-Indo-European root (starting with *d- and thus regularly having t-).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Usage
- Colloquial
- Informal
- Derogatory
- Slang
- Obsolete
- American usage
Inflected Forms
Derived Forms
Phrases
as tight as a duck's arse
tight as a duck's arse
as tight as a gnat's chuff
tight as a gnat's chuff
as tight as Dick's hatband
blow me tight
bottle-tight
finger tight
Frequently Paired Words
Synonyms
close
serried
crowded
dense
taut
tense
under tension
close-knit
intimate
thick as thieves
niggardly
parsimonious