Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A living being; a creature.
  • adjective Valorous; brave.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A Middle English form of weight.
  • Having warlike prowess; valiant; courageous; strong and active; agile; nimble; swift.
  • noun See wite.
  • noun A person, whether male or female; a human being: as, an unlucky wight.
  • noun A preternatural, unearthly, or uncanny creature; an elf, sprite, witch, or the like.
  • noun A space of time; a whit; a while.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun obsolete Weight.
  • noun obsolete A whit; a bit; a jot.
  • noun obsolete A supernatural being.
  • noun A human being; a person, either male or female; -- now used chiefly in irony or burlesque, or in humorous language.
  • adjective Obs. or Poetic Swift; nimble; agile; strong and active.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Brave, valorous, strong.
  • adjective Strong; stout; active.
  • noun archaic A living creature, especially a human being.
  • noun paganism A being of one of the Nine Worlds of heathen belief, especially a nature spirit, elf or ancestor.
  • noun poetic A ghost or other supernatural entity.
  • noun fantasy A wraith-like creature.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun an isle and county of southern England in the English Channel
  • noun a human being; `wight' is an archaic term

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old English wiht; see wekti- in Indo-European roots.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old Norse vīgt, neuter of vīgr, able to fight; see weik- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English, from Old Norse vígt, neuter of vígr ("skilled in fighting, of age"), cognate with Old English wīġ.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English, from Old English wiht ("wight, person, creature, being, whit, thing, something, anything"), from Proto-Germanic *wihtiz (“essence, object”), from Proto-Indo-European *wekti- (“cause, sake, thing”), from Proto-Indo-European *wekʷ- (“to say, tell”). Cognate with Old High German wiht ("creature, thing"), Dutch wicht, German Wicht, Swedish vätte. See also whit.

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Examples

Comments

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  • Also a ghost or spirit that haunts a barrow

    barrow wight

    February 18, 2008

  • Two wongs don't make a wight.

    February 18, 2008

  • Found with monotonous regularity in Spenser's "Faerie Queene" where it seems to just mean "person" - whether human or faerie.

    February 8, 2009