underwit
underwit noun: an underwitted person; a nitwit.
Noun
underwit (plural underwits)
- An underwitted person; a nitwit.
- That in the mean time, her household affairs, and the care of her children, will be wholly laid aside; her toilet will be crowded with all the under-wits, where the conversation will pass in criticising on the last play or poem that comes out […]c. 1699-1736, Jonathan Swift, Of the Education of Ladies
- "Well," said the captain, "then we must come Yankee over them, and I've notions enough here to baffle a nation of such underwits."1832, Mary Russell Mitford, Lights and shadows of American life
Forms of underwit
| plural | underwits |
|---|---|
| alternative form | under-wit |
Origin of underwit
From under- + wit.
Questions about underwit
- What does underwit mean?
- Underwit means an underwitted person; a nitwit.
- What part of speech is underwit?
- Underwit is a noun.
- What is the plural of underwit?
- The plural of underwit is underwits.
Words near underwit in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: underwit (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-underwit.wav.
Cite this entry: “underwit.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/underwit. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.