Word.ws English Dictionary

wist

/wɪst/

wist is the simple past and past participle of wit.

Meaning of wit

Verb

wit

  1. (ambitransitive, obsolete except in to wit) To know, be aware of (constructed with of when used intransitively).
    • You committed terrible actions — to wit, murder and theft — and should be punished accordingly.

See all 8 meanings of wit

Verb

wist (third-person singular simple present wists, present participle wisting, simple past and past participle wisted)

  1. (nonstandard, pseudo-archaic) To know, be aware of.
    • […] speak to the man, and he wists not that his face doth shine.1890, Joseph Parker, The People's Bible: The Psalter, page 218

Forms of wist

third-person singular presentwists
present participlewisting
past participlewisted
pastwisted

Origin of wist

Past indicative of wit: from Old English witan, from Proto-Germanic *witaną, from Proto-Indo-European *weyd- (“see, know”). Cognate with Dutch weten, German wissen, Swedish veta, and Latin videō (“to see”). Compare guide.

A misunderstanding, or a joking use of the past indicative of wit; see Etymology 1.

Words that rhyme with wist

43 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about wist

What does wist mean?
Wist means to know, be aware of.
What is wist the simple past and past participle of?
Wist is the simple past and past participle of wit.
What part of speech is wist?
Wist is a verb.
How do you pronounce wist?
Wist is pronounced /wɪst/.
What is the past tense of wist?
The past tense of wist is wisted.

Words near wist in the dictionary

  1. Wisslers
  2. wissles
  3. wissling
  4. Wissman
  5. Wissmans
  6. wist
  7. Wistanstow
  8. Wistar
  9. wistaria
  10. wistarias
  11. Wistars

Source and license

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