wit
/wɪt/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.96 in modern English
6
Scrabble Score
3
Letters
1
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The ability to think quickly; mental cleverness, especially under short time constraints.
Countable; Uncountable
verb
To know, be aware of (constructed with of when used intransitively).
Example Sentences
- "He's gone completely out of his wits."
- "Keep your wits about you."
- "Where she has gone to is beyond the wit of man to say."
- "My father had a quick wit and a steady hand."
- "The opportunity was right in front of you, and you didn't even have the wit to take it!"
- "I gif the witt, I gif the strenght, / of all thou sees, of brede & lengthe; / thou shall be wonder wise. / Myrth and Ioy to haue at will, / All thi likyng to fulfill, / and dwell in paradise."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *weyd- Proto-Indo-European *wóyde Proto-Germanic *witaną Proto-Germanic *witją Proto-West Germanic *witi Old English witt Middle English wit English wit From Middle English wit, witt, wyt, from Old English witt (“mind, sanity, sense, understanding”), from Proto-West Germanic *witi, from Proto-Germanic *witją (“knowledge; reason; wit”), from Proto-Germanic *witaną (“to know”), from Proto-Indo-European *wóyde (“to know”), from *weyd- (“to see”). Cognates Cognate with Dutch wit (“knowledge”), German and Luxembourgish Witz (“joke; humour, wit”), Low German Weet (“knowledge; idea; inkling”), Yiddish וויץ (vits, “joke”), Danish vid (“wit”), Faroese and Icelandic vit (“intelligence, wits; reason, sense; knowledge; awareness, sentience”), Norwegian Bokmål and Swedish vett (“intelligence, sense, wit”), Norwegian Nynorsk vett, vit (“sense, wits”), Gothic 𐌿𐌽𐍅𐌹𐍄𐌹 (unwiti, “folly, ignorance”); also Breton gouzout (“to know”), Cornish godhvos, goffos (“to know”), Irish feadair (“to know”), Welsh gwybod (“to know”), Latin videō (“to see”), Ancient Greek οἶδ’ (oîd’), οἶδα (oîda, “to know”), Albanian vizë (“line, stripe, track; dash”), Latvian veids (“form, kind, mode, type”), Lithuanian veidas (“face; front; appearance, aspect, look”), Belarusian ве́даць (vjédacʹ, “to know”), Bulgarian вям (vjam, “to know”), Czech vědět (“to know”), Polish wiedzieć (“to know”), Russian ве́дать (védatʹ, “to know”), Serbo-Croatian vedeti, viedieti (“to know”), Slovak vedieť (“to know”), Slovene vedeti (“to know”), Ukrainian ві́дати (vídaty, “to know; to deal, manage”), Armenian գիտեմ (gitem, “I know”), գիտենալ (gitenal), գիտնալ (gitnal, “to know”), Avestan 𐬬𐬀𐬉𐬛 (vaēd, “find”), 𐬬𐬌𐬛 (vid, “know, understand”), Persian نوید (navid / nawīd, nuwēd, “invitation; annunciation; good news”), Tocharian A ime (“awareness, consciousness, memory, thought”), Tocharian B īme (“awareness, consciousness, memory, thought”), ūwe (“educated, knowledgeable, learned”), Sanskrit विद् (vid, “to know; to find; to consider as”). Compare wise.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /wɪt/
Usage
Inflected Forms
wits (plural)
no-table-tags (table tags)
glossary (inflection template)
wot (first person, present)
wist (first person, past)
wost (present, second person)
wottest (present, second person)
wistest (past, second person)
wot (present, singular)
wist (past, singular)
wist (past, plural)
- (subjunctive)
Derived Forms
Phrases
brevity is the soul of wit
collect one's wits
gather one's wits
half-wit
have one’s wits about one
mother wit
native wit
scare out of one’s wits