Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Inward knowledge; understanding; conscience. This word is best known in the title of a Middle English work in the Kentish dialect, “The Ayenbite of Inwyt,” that is, Remorse of Conscience, translated in the year 1340 by Dan Michel, a monk, from a French work entitled “Le somme des vices et des vertues.”
Wiktionary
- n. conscience, internal sense of morality
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Inward sense; mind; understanding; conscience.
Examples
“Anyway, the most obvious distinction is that the sociopath would presumably remove the implant if he could, while most of us would not want to anaesthetise the agenbite of inwit, if this were somehow possible.”
“May 18, 2008 at 4:55 pm iz dat teh ag-inbite ub inwit?”
When fleas go unchecked - Lolcats 'n' Funny Pictures of Cats - I Can Has Cheezburger?
“Some of it is maybe "agenbite of inwit," the Middle English phrase meaning remorse of conscience.”
“His subsequent interest in Shintoism and Buddhism lacks the mordancy and introspection (the "agenbite of inwit," as Joyce liked to put it) of his earlier hermeneutic investigations.”
“And, oh yes, my theory has been peer-reviewed but not in any of your so-called biased scientific journals. inwit”
Breaking news: Darwin appears in holy frying pan! - The Panda's Thumb
“What James Joyce called the agenbyte of inwit - a remorse of consciousness.”
“His refusal to take part in the family's prayers for her seems to have stimulated that remorse of conscience, that "agenbite of inwit" which reechoes through Ulysses.”
“They are so thoroughly unhealthy, so morbid, so pallid with moonlight, so indentured by the ayenbite of inwit, that it is hard to believe that”
“Denum æðeling tō yppan, _the prince_ (Bēowulf), _honored by the Danes, went to the high seat_, 1815; ēode ... under inwit-hrōf, 3124; pl. þǣr swīðferhðe sittan ēodon, 493; ēodon him þā tōgēanes, _went to meet him_,”
“S. proposes: ēode eahta sum under inwit-hrōf hilderinca: sum on handa bær, etc.”
fbharjo inwit in Beowulf means 'mischief', 'cunning hostility' and 'evil'. What a transition to inwit has to its later meaning. The Beowulfian meaning is more 'outwit' in the current venacular
It is much like the contrast between 'hostile' and 'hospitable' that come from the same Indo-European root ghos-ti-, stranger. Nov 28, 2011
ruzuzu From the Tweets:
“Dilly is drowning. Agenbite. Save her. Agenbite. She will drown me with her. Salt green death. We. Agenbite of inwit. #Ulysses #Joyce”
@11ysses
Nov 28, 2011
AnWulf Inwit, a term for conscience, suggests the inner senses and interior sensibility, which accords nicely with the current state of the senses under the regime of electric technologies. — Marshall McLuhan, The Agenbite of Outwit, 1998 Nov 28, 2011
fbharjo used by Gerard Manley Hopkins along with instress and inscape.
There is one notable dead tree . . . the inscape markedly holding its most simple and beautiful oneness up from the ground through a graceful swerve below (I think) the spring of the branches up to the tops of the timber. I saw the inscape freshly, as if my mind were still growing, though with a companion the eye and the ear are for the most part shut and instress cannot come. - from Hopkin's Journals Feb 19, 2007
redfox See agenbite. Dec 10, 2006