flite
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.83 in modern English
8
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
a scolding.
Etymology
From Middle English flyt, flit, iflit, ȝeflit, from Old English flit, ġeflit (“strife, contention”), from Proto-West Germanic *flit n; related to Proto-West Germanic *flīt m, from Proto-Germanic *flītaz (“zeal, striving, diligence”). The term in Old English had a short vowel, so the long vowel in the modern term was likely influenced by the verb (see below). Cognate with Scots flyte (“scolding, chiding, reproof”), Saterland Frisian Fliet (“zeal, diligence”), Dutch vlijt (“zeal, diligence”), German Low German Fliet (“zeal, diligence”), German Fleiß (“zeal, diligence”), Danish flid (“zeal, diligence”), Swedish flit (“zeal, diligence”).