Word.ws English Dictionary

plighting

plighting is the present participle and gerund of plight.

Meaning of plight

Verb (1)

plight (third-person singular simple present plights, present participle plighting, simple past and past participle plighted)

  1. (archaic, transitive) To nominate an object of value as a security against a promise; to pledge something, as one's faith, trust, allegiance, or something symbolic of this.
    • "Travel shall I and woo;
      Plight me shall I a flower;
      Try shall I my sword so good,
      To my weal or my woe in the stour."1828, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, volume I, London: William Harrison Ainsworth, page 170
  2. (transitive) Specifically, to pledge (one's troth etc.) as part of a marriage ceremony.
  3. (reflexive) To promise (oneself) to someone, or to do something.
    • I ask what I have done to deserve it, one daughter hobnobbing with radicals and the other planning to plight herself to a criminal.1992, Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety, Harper Perennial, published 2007, page 226

Verb (2)

plight (third-person singular simple present plights, present participle plighting, simple past and past participle plighted)

  1. (obsolete) To weave; to braid; to fold; to plait.
    • ſhe wore a plighted Garmend of divers colours,1670, John Milton, “The Second Book”, in The History of Britain, that Part Especially now Call’d England. […], London: […] J[ohn] M[acock] for James Allestry, […] , →OCLC, page 67

See all 13 meanings of plight

Noun

plighting (plural plightings)

  1. The act by which something is plighted or pledged.
    • There was a practice in those times, generated, like other involuntary struggles against wrong, by the absurdities in authority, of resorting to marriages, or rather plightings of troth, made in secret, and in the eye of heaven.1840, Leigh Hunt, The Seer: Or, Common-places Refreshed, page 55

Forms of plighting

pluralplightings

Questions about plighting

What does plighting mean?
Plighting means the act by which something is plighted or pledged.
What is plighting the present participle and gerund of?
Plighting is the present participle and gerund of plight.
What part of speech is plighting?
Plighting is a noun.
What is the plural of plighting?
The plural of plighting is plightings.

Words near plighting in the dictionary

  1. plight
  2. plighted
  3. plighter
  4. plighters
  5. plightful
  6. plighting
  7. plightings
  8. plightless
  9. plightly
  10. plights
  11. plighty

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: plighting (page history and authors); plight (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “plighting.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/plighting. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.