Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A loop in a rope.
- n. The middle or slack part of an extended rope.
- n. A bend or curve, especially in a shoreline.
- n. A wide bay formed by such a bend or curve.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. . A bend or bending; an angle, especially in a living body, as of the elbow, or the inward bend of a horse's chambrel, or the bend of the fore knees.
- n. 2. A loop of a rope, in distinction from the ends; any bent part or turn of a rope between the ends.
- n. . A narrow bay or recess in a sea-coast between comparatively distant headlands; a long and gradual bend of a coast-line: used especially in the names Bight of Benin and of Biafra in Africa, and the Great Australian Bight (on the south coast).
- n. . A similar bend in the shore of a river or a bay, or recess in a mountain; a bay-like indentation.
- To fold or double so as to make one or more bights.
Wiktionary
- n. A corner, bend, or angle; a hollow; as, the bight of a horse's knee; the bight of an elbow.
- n. An area of sea lying between two promontories; larger than a bay, wider than a gulf
- n. A curve in a rope
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A corner, bend, or angle; a hollow.
- n. A bend in a coast forming an open bay.
- n. The double part of a rope when folded, in distinction from the ends; that is, a round, bend, or coil not including the ends; a loop.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a broad bay formed by an indentation in the shoreline
- n. a loop in a rope
- n. the middle part of a slack rope (as distinguished from its ends)
- v. fasten with a bight
- n. a bend or curve (especially in a coastline)
Etymologies
- Middle English, bend, angle, from Old English byht; see bheug- in Indo-European roots.
Examples
“Figure I is a double bight, which is laid over the top of the pack, so that the two loops hang, well down, half on each side.”
“At the head of the bight is a lagoon; but the entrance proving to be very shallow, and finding no security, we continued on our voyage; trusting that some place of shelter would present itself, if obliged to seek it by necessity.”
“bight" -- surrounded by ships and the men who sail them -- I might almost have been a hardy newspaper man!”
“For convenience in handling rope and learning the various knots, ties, and bends, we use the terms "standing part," "bight," and "end" (Fig. 3).”
“While everybody was thus occupied with things immediately concerning their safety, nobody paid any attention to the approach of a boat, which had set out from a kind of bight in the face of the mountain.”
“Just where we landed was a small cove, or "bight," which gave us, at high tide, a few square feet of sand-beach between the sea and the bottom of the hill.”
Two years before the mast, and twenty-four years after: a personal narrative
“-- In a floe may be natural or artificial; the former being simply a small "bight," in which a ship is placed to secure her from the danger of external pressure; and the latter, a square space cut out with saws for a similar purpose.”
“In this manner we had advanced about four miles to the westward by eight P.M., after eleven hours of very laborious exertion; and having then come to the end of the clear water, and the weather being again foggy, the ships were secured in a deep "bight," or bay in a floe, called by the sailors a”
“bight," which gave us, at high tide, a few square feet of sand-beach between the sea and the bottom of the hill.”
“There are always shoals of whales about that part, and it is supposed a 'bight' of the cable lying off the ground got wound up like a rope round a screw. ”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘bight’.
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Knee-ded Words
In honor (?) of John
aknee, anomalogonatous, anticnemion, bainberg, bandy-jig, besagne, bight, bott, knee, breast-knee, cartilage, cnemapophysis and 155 more...
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-ight
light, night, wight, hight, knight, fight, bright, right, fright, bight, eight, might and 174 more...
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Ecology
apishamore, argonaut, latent, unbacked, dichotomy, noctilucent, assoil, animalcule, succinct, vespertine, crozzle, vermilion and 13 more...
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eg's list
lexicolony
nefandous, ineffable, ultracrepidate, haecceity, quiddity, noumenon, hypokeimenon, extemporaneous, theomastix, caducity, niddering, tellurian and 16 more...
fbharjo a river or sea bend (baylike) Feb 3, 2007