Word.ws English Dictionary

witless

witless adjective: lacking wit or understanding; foolish.

Adjective

witless (comparative more witless, superlative most witless)

  1. Lacking wit or understanding; foolish.
    • Then will we march to all thoſe Indian Mines,
      My witleſſe brother to the Chriſtians loſt:
      And ranſome them with fame and vſurie.c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC...
    • To be his whore, is witles; Out upon't;1613–1614 (date written), John Fletcher, William Shak[e]speare, The Two Noble Kinsmen: […], London: […] Tho[mas] Cotes, for Iohn Waterson; […], published 1634, →OCLC, Act II, scene iii, page 31
  2. Indiscreet; not using clear and sound judgment.
  3. Mindless, lacking conscious thought or the capacity for it.
    • Rage warps my clearest cry
      To witless agony.1941, Theodore Roethke, “Open House”, in Open House, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A[braham] Knopf, →OCLC; republished in The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke, London: Faber and Faber […], 1968, →OCLC...

witless meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Malayalam and Persian

witless in Tamil

அறிவுத்திறமற்ற, மந்தபுத்தியுள்ள, ஞானசூனியமான, முட்டாள்தனமான

witless in Urdu

احمق, بےوقوف, بدھو, نادان

witless in Malayalam

unintelligent, foolish, stupid
വിവേകമില്ലാത്ത, ബുദ്ധിയില്ലാത്ത, അവിവേകിയായ, ജാല്മ, ജാല്മിക, അവിവേകമുള്ള

witless in Persian

Without wit or understanding
بیخرد bi-xerad

Antonyms of witless

Forms of witless

comparativemore witless
superlativemost witless

Origin of witless

From Middle English witles, from Old English witlēas (“senseless; witless”), from Proto-Germanic *witjalausaz (“witless”), equivalent to wit + -less. Cognate with Swedish vettlös (“senseless; witless; wild”), Icelandic vitlaus (“senseless; witless; foolish; mad”).

Words formed from witless

Phrases with witless

Questions about witless

What does witless mean?
Witless means lacking wit or understanding; foolish.
What is witless in Tamil?
Witless in Tamil is அறிவுத்திறமற்ற, மந்தபுத்தியுள்ள, ஞானசூனியமான. See Witless meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is witless?
Witless is an adjective.

Words near witless in the dictionary

  1. witkey
  2. Witkin
  3. Witkoff
  4. witkop
  5. Witkop syndrome
  6. witless
  7. Witless Bay
  8. witless wonder
  9. witless wonders
  10. witlessly
  11. witlessness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: witless (page history and authors); witless (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); witless (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); witless (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-witless.wav.

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