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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

wight.

A living creature, especially a human being.

5 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/waɪt/
  1. A living creature, especially a human being.

    archaic
  2. A supernatural being, often used in compounds such as the land-vættr which guard the land, especially the four guardians of Iceland.

    Germanic · Old-Norse
  3. A ghost, deity or other supernatural entity.

    poetic
  4. A wraith-like creature.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English wight, wiȝt, from Old English wiht (“thing, creature”), from Proto-West Germanic *wihti, from Proto-Germanic *wihtiz (“thing, creature”, literally “being”), from Proto-Indo-European *wekti- (“cause, sake, thing”), from *wekʷ- (“to say, tell”). Cognate with Scots wicht (“creature, being, human”), Dutch wicht (“child, baby, girl”), German Low German Wicht (“girl; wight”), German Wicht (“wretch, wight, little creature, scoundrel”), Danish vætte (“underground creature, gnome”), Norwegian Bokmål vette (“underground creature, gnome”), Swedish vätte (“underground creature, gnome”), Icelandic vættur (“imp, elf”). Doublet of whit.

adj/waɪt/
  1. Brave, valorous, strong.

    archaic
  2. Strong; stout; active.

    UK · dialectal · obsolete
Where this word comes from

From Middle English wight, from Old Norse vígt, neuter of vígr (“skilled in fighting, of age”), from Proto-Germanic *wīgaz (“fighting”), from Proto-Indo-European *weyk- (“to fight”). Cognate with Old English wīġ.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.