Word.ws English Dictionary

sithe

/saɪð/

sithe is the obsolete spelling of scythe.

sithe is the alternative spelling of sith.

Meaning of scythe

Noun

scythe (plural scythes)

  1. An instrument for mowing grass, grain, etc. by hand, composed of a long, curving blade with a sharp concave edge, fastened to a long handle called a snath.
    • And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence
      Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.1609, William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 12”, in Shake-speares Sonnets. […], London: By G[eorge] Eld for T[homas] T[horpe] and are to be sold by William Aspley, →OCLC
  2. (historical) A scythe-shaped blade attached to ancient war chariots.
  3. The tenth Lenormand card.

See all 7 meanings of scythe

Meaning of sith

Noun

sith (plural siths)

  1. (obsolete) A journey, way.
    • The holy gost before vs glad / ffull softly on his sithe15th c., “Thomas Indie [Thomas of India]”, in Wakefield Mystery Plays; Re-edited in George England, Alfred W. Pollard, editors, The Towneley Plays (Early English Text Society Extra Series; LXXI)...
    Synonyms:
    trip, fare, journey
  2. (obsolete) One's journey of life, experience, one's lot, also by extension life, lifetime.
    • Christ's sith of sorrow and suffering.
  3. (obsolete) An instant in time, a point in time or an occasion.
    • Of them the other philosophers have, by siths, taken their beginning.a. 1450, Secretum Secretorum in Ashmole

See all 4 meanings of sith

Verb (1)

sithe (third-person singular simple present sithes, present participle sithing, simple past and past participle sithed)

  1. (obsolete) To journey, travel, wayfare.

Verb (2)

sithe (third-person singular simple present sithes, present participle sithing, simple past and past participle sithed)

  1. (dated, dialectal) To sigh.
    • c1475, The Macro Plays, Mankindː
      I may both sithe and sob; this is a piteous remembrance

Noun

sithe (plural sithes)

  1. (obsolete) A sigh.

Forms of sithe

Noun
pluralsithes
Verb
third-person singular presentsithes
present participlesithing
past participlesithed
pastsithed

Origin of sithe

From the Anglo-Saxon siġþe meaning scythe. The spelling with was influenced by unrelated Latin word scissor (“cutter”), and scindere (“to split”).

Regional pronunciation of sigh.

Clipping of sithen.

Words formed from sithe

Questions about sithe

What does sithe mean?
Sithe means to journey, travel, wayfare.
What is sithe the obsolete spelling of?
Sithe is the obsolete spelling of scythe.
What part of speech is sithe?
Sithe can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce sithe?
Sithe is pronounced /saɪð/.
What is the past tense of sithe?
The past tense of sithe is sithed.

Words near sithe in the dictionary

  1. Sitges
  2. sith
  3. sithcund
  4. sithcundman
  5. sithcundmen
  6. sithe
  7. sithed
  8. sithee
  9. sitheman
  10. sithemen
  11. sithen

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sithe (page history and authors); scythe (page history and authors); sith (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: “sithe.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sithe. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.