Word.ws English Dictionary

wight

/waɪt/

wight noun: a living creature, especially a human being.

Noun

wight (plural wights)

  1. (archaic) A living creature, especially a human being.
    • O bace gongarian wight, wilt thou the ſpicket willd?c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, […] [T]he Merrie Wiues of Windsor. […] (First Quarto), London: […] T[homas] C[reede] for Arthur Ihonson, […], published 1602, →OCLC, [Act I, scene iii]...
    • Oh ſay me true if thou wert mortal wight
      And why from us ſo quickly thou didſt take thy flight.1624 (date written), John Milton, “On the Death of a Fair Infant Dying of a Cough”, in Poems, &c. upon Several Occasions, London: […] Tho[mas] Dring […], published 1673, →OCLC, stanza VI, page 19
  2. (Germanic, Old-Norse) A supernatural being, often used in compounds such as the land-vættr which guard the land, especially the four guardians of Iceland.
  3. (poetic) A ghost, deity or other supernatural entity.
    • But I saw a glow-worm near, / Who replied: ‘What wailing wight / Calls the watchman of the night?1789, William Blake, A Dream, lines 14–16
    • “In judging of that tempestuous wind called Euroclydon,” says an old writer—of whose works I possess the only copy extant—“it maketh a marvellous difference, whether thou lookest out at it from a glass window where the frost is all on the outside, or whether thou observest it from that sashless...1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 2, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 10
  4. A wraith-like creature.

Adjective

wight

  1. (archaic, except in dialects) Brave, valorous, strong.
    • I haue two sones that were but late made knyghtes / and the eldest hyghte sir Tirre /[…]/ and my yongest sone hyght Lauayne / and yf hit please yow / he shalle ryde with yow vnto that Iustes / and he is of his age x stronge and wyght1485, Sir Thomas Malory, chapter IX, in Le Morte Darthur, book XVIII
  2. (UK, dialectal, obsolete) Strong; stout; active.
    • Then spake Much the milner son, / Ever more well him betide! / ‘Take twelve of thy wight yeomen, / Well weapon’d by thy side. / Such one would thyselfë slon, / That twelve dare not abide.’a. 1450, “Robin Hood and the Monk”, in Frank Sidgwick, editor, Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws, published 1912, page 98, lines 29–34
    • Ye do you to my father's stable, / Where steeds do stand baith wight and able; / Strike ane o' them upo' the back, / The swiftest will gie his head a wap.a. 1828, “Leesome Brand”, in Peter Buchan, editor, Ancient Ballads and Songs of the North of Scotland, volume 1, published 1828, page 39, lines 21–24

Proper noun (1) capitalized: Wight

Wight

  1. The Isle of Wight.
  2. A sea area comprising part of the English Channel, from the southern English coast down to Normandy.

Proper noun (2) capitalized: Wight

Wight

  1. A surname.

wight meaning in Urdu

wight in Urdu

مخلوق

Examples of wight in a sentence

  • But woe betide the wandering wight, / That treads its circle in the night.1808 February 22, Walter Scott, “Canto Third. The Hostel, or Inn.”, in Marmion; a Tale of Flodden Field, Edinburgh: […] J[ames] Ballantyne...
  • Some gamesome wights will tell you that they have to plant weeds there, they don’t grow naturally; [...]1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “Nantucket”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers...
  • "Who is the miserable little wight?" he asked.c. 1855, Charlotte Brontë, “Emma. (A Fragment of a Story by the Late Charlotte Brontë.)”, in The Cornhill Magazine, volume I, number 4...
  • The man that hath no love of chess/Is truth to say a sorry wight.c. 1872, a Knight's tour cryptotour poem, possibly by Howard Staunton, lines 1 and 2

Forms of wight

pluralwights

Plural of wight: wights

Origin of wight

From Middle English wight, wiȝt, from Old English wiht (“thing, creature”), from Proto-West Germanic *wihti, from Proto-Germanic *wihtiz (“thing, creature”, literally “being”), from Proto-Indo-European *wekti- (“cause, sake, thing”), from *wekʷ- (“to say, tell”). Cognate with Scots wicht (“creature, being, human”), Dutch wicht (“child, baby, girl”), German Low German Wicht (“girl; wight”), German Wicht (“wretch, wight, little creature, scoundrel”), Danish vætte (“underground creature, gnome”), Norwegian Bokmål vette (“underground creature, gnome”), Swedish vätte (“underground creature, gnome”), Icelandic vættur (“imp, elf”). Doublet of whit.

From Middle English wight, from Old Norse vígt, neuter of vígr (“skilled in fighting, of age”), from Proto-Germanic *wīgaz (“fighting”), from Proto-Indo-European *weyk- (“to fight”). Cognate with Old English wīġ.

From Old English Wiht, from Latin Vēctis (“Isle of Wight”).

Words formed from wight

Phrases with wight

Words that rhyme with wight

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about wight

What does wight mean?
Wight means a living creature, especially a human being.
What is wight in Urdu?
Wight in Urdu is مخلوق. See Wight meaning in Urdu.
How do you use wight in a sentence?
But woe betide the wandering wight, / That treads its circle in the night.
What part of speech is wight?
Wight can be a noun, an adjective or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce wight?
Wight is pronounced /waɪt/.
What is the plural of wight?
The plural of wight is wights.

Words near wight in the dictionary

  1. wiggly
  2. Wiggo
  3. wiggs
  4. wiggy
  5. Wighill
  6. wight
  7. wighteone
  8. wightly
  9. Wightman
  10. Wightman axiom
  11. Wightman axioms

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wight (page history and authors); Wight (page history and authors); wight (Urdu Wiktionary) (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: en-us-white.ogg, en-uk-white.ogg.

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