Word.ws English Dictionary

waite

waite is the archaic spelling of wait.

Meaning of wait

Verb

wait (third-person singular simple present waits, present participle waiting, simple past and past participle waited)

  1. (intransitive) To delay movement or action until some event or time; to remain neglected or in readiness.
    • Wait here until your car arrives.
  2. (US, intransitive, stative) To wait tables; to serve customers in a restaurant or other eating establishment.
    • She used to wait in this joint.
    Synonyms:
    wait on, wait upon, serve
  3. (archaic, transitive) To delay movement or action until the arrival or occurrence of; to await. (Now generally superseded by “wait for”.)
    • to wait one’s turn
  4. (obsolete, transitive) To attend on; to accompany; especially, to attend with ceremony or respect.
    • He chose a thousand horse, the flower of all / His warlike troops, to wait the funeral.1697, Virgil, “Aeneis”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC
    Synonyms:
    bestand
  5. (obsolete) To attend as a consequence; to follow upon; to accompany.
    Synonyms:
    attend, escort, go with
  6. (colloquial, obsolete) To defer or postpone (especially a meal).
    • Montague Thorold, who impatiently watched her wherever she went, came to tell her that his mother waited breakfast for her.1791, Charlotte Smith, Celestina, Broadview, published 2004, page 185
    Synonyms:
    defer

See all 15 meanings of wait

Proper noun capitalized: Waite

Waite (countable and uncountable, plural Waites)

  1. A surname originating as an occupation for a watchman.
  2. A town in Washington County, Maine, United States, named after a lumberman.

Forms of waite

Verb
third-person singular presentwaites
present participlewaiting
past participlewaited
pastwaited
Proper noun
pluralWaites
alternative formWaight
alternative formWaitt

Origin of waite

English surname for a watchman of Norman origin, from the verb wait. Sometimes confused with White or Wheat.

Questions about waite

What does waite mean?
Waite means a surname originating as an occupation for a watchman.
What is waite the archaic spelling of?
Waite is the archaic spelling of wait.
What part of speech is waite?
Waite is a proper noun.

Words near waite in the dictionary

  1. Waitangi Day
  2. Waitara
  3. waitasec
  4. Waitby
  5. Waitchie
  6. waite
  7. waited
  8. waited a minute
  9. waited and saw
  10. waited and seen
  11. waited around

Source and license

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