Definitions

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

  • noun Blame; fault.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Blame; censure; reproach; fault.
  • noun Punishment; penalty; mulct; fine: in old Eng. criminal law, a fine paid to the king or other lord in respect of an offense.
  • To go.
  • noun An obsolete form of wit.
  • To observe; keep; guard; preserve; protect.
  • l. To impute (to one) as a fault; blame for; blame (that): governing directly a noun or clause, and taking an indirect object in the dative.
  • To impute wrong to; find fault with; blame; censure.

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

  • transitive verb Obs. or Scot. To reproach; to blame; to censure; also, to impute as blame.
  • noun Obs. or Scot. Blame; reproach.

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

  • noun Blame, responsibility, guilt
  • noun Punishment, penalty, fine, bote, mulct
  • verb To go, go away, depart, perish, vanish
  • verb To blame; regard as guilty, fault, accuse
  • verb To reproach, censure, mulct
  • verb To observe, keep, guard, preserve, protect

Etymologies

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

[Middle English, from Old English wīte, penalty; see weid- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English wītan ("guilt, blameworthiness, blame, wrongdoing, misdeed, offense, punishment, retribution, fine, bote, customary rent"), from Old English wīte, see below.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old English witan

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English wīten ("to accuse, reproach, punish, suspect"), Old English wītan ("to look, behold, see, guard, keep, impute or ascribe to, accuse, reproach, blame"), derived from Old English wīte, see below.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word wite.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.