wit – English noun declension

English noun forms of wit

Noun: wit
Singularwit
Pluralwits

Sample Sentences

  • He's gone completely out of his wits.
  • Keep your wits about you.
  • Where she has gone to is beyond the wit of man to say.
  • My father had a quick wit and a steady hand.
  • The opportunity was right in front of you, and you didn't even have the wit to take it!
  • I gif the witt, I gif the strenght, / of all thou sees, of brede & lengthe; / thou shall be wonder wise. / Myrth and Ioy to haue at will, / All thi likyng to fulfill, / and dwell in paradise. (I give thee consciousness, I give thee strength over all thou seest, over all its breadth and length thou shalt be wondrously wise. Mirth and joy [you shall] have at will to fulfil all thy liking and dwell in paradise.) [15th c., “[The Creation]”, in Wakefield Mystery Plays; Re-edited in George England, Alfred W. Pollard, editors, The Towneley Plays (Early English Text Society Extra Series; LXXI), London: […] Oxford University Press, 1897, →OCLC, page 6, lines 174–179:]
  • Wel, wel (Meander) thou art deepely read:
  • And hauing thee, I haue a iewell ſure:
  • Go on my Lord, and giue your charge I ſay,
  • Thy wit wil make vs Conquerors to day. [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; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire; London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act II, scene ii:]
  • O, learn to read what silent love hath writ:
  • To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit. [1609, William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 23”, in Shake-speares Sonnets. […], London: By G[eorge] Eld for T[homas] T[horpe] and are to be sold by William Aspley, →OCLC:]
  • The best man's speech was hilarious, full of wit and charm.
  • Wit is just as much put upon—blamed for a thousand impertinences over which it would not have held for a moment its glittering shield; it is like the radiant fairy doomed to wander over earth, concealed and transformed, and only allowed on rare occasions to shine forth in its true and sparkling form. It is well that wit is an impalpable and ethereal substance, or it must long since have evaporated in indignation at that peculiarly wretched and mistaken race, its imitators. [1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XVIII, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume III, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 152:]
  • The humor of my proposition appealed more strongly to Miss Trevor than I had looked for, and from that time forward she became her old self again;[…]. Our table in the dining-room became again the abode of scintillating wit and caustic repartee, Farrar bracing up to his old standard, and the demand for seats in the vicinity rose to an animated competition. [1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter VIII, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:]
  • Evelyn Peters: "Don't worry, Marge. Her idea of wit is nothing more than an incisive observation humorously phrased and delivered with impeccable timing". [1996 February 4, Jennifer Crittenden, “Scenes from the Class Struggle in Springfield”, in The Simpsons, season 7, episode 14, production code 3F13:]
  • […] the cemetery – which people of shattering wit like Sampson never tired of calling ‘the dead centre of town’ […] [1991 September, Stephen Fry, chapter 1, in The Liar, London: Heinemann, →ISBN, section III, page 26:]
  • Your friend is quite a wit, isn't he?
  • Tuc[ca]. […] Can thy Author doe it impudently enough? / Hiſt[rio]. O, I warrant you, Captaine: and ſpitefully inough too; he ha's one of the moſt ouerflowing villanous wits, in Rome. He will ſlander any man that breathes; If he diſguſt him. / Tucca. I'le know the poor, egregious, nitty Raſcall; and he haue ſuch commendable Qualities, I'le cheriſh him: […] [1601, Ben Jonson, Poetaster or The Arraignment: […], London: […] [R. Bradock] for M[atthew] L[ownes] […], published 1602, →OCLC, Act III:]
  • […] here were no Gibers, Cenſurers, Backbiters, Pick-pockets, Highwaymen, Houſebreakers, Attorneys, Bawds, Buffoons, Gameſters, Politicians, Wits, ſplenetick tedious Talkers, Controvertiſts, Raviſhers, Murderers, Robbers, Virtuoſo's; […] [1726 October 28, [Jonathan Swift], “The Author’s Oeconomy and Happy Life among the Houyhnhnms. […]”, in Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. […] [Gulliver’s Travels], volume II, London: […] Benj[amin] Motte, […], →OCLC, part IV (A Voyage to the Houyhnhnms), page 301:]
  • A group of young wits from the resort town of Pärnu sells cans of seawater as gag gifts; on the labels they list the high pollution levels and give medical instructions. [1989 May, Priit J. Vesilind, “The Baltic: Arena of Power”, in National Geographic, volume 175, number 5, page 632:]

Etymology

1. Etymology tree
2. Proto-Indo-European *weyd-
3. Proto-Indo-European *wóyde
4. Proto-Germanic *witaną
5. Proto-Germanic *witją
6. Proto-West Germanic *witi
7. Old English witt
8. Middle English wit
9. English wit
10. From Middle English wit, witt, wyt, from Old English witt (“mind, sanity, sense, understanding”), from Proto-West Germanic *witi, from Proto-Germanic *witją (“knowledge; reason; wit”), from Proto-Germanic *witaną (“to know”), from Proto-Indo-European *wóyde (“to know”), from *weyd- (“to see”).
11. Cognates
12. Cognate with Dutch wit (“knowledge”), German and Luxembourgish Witz (“joke; humour, wit”), Low German Weet (“knowledge; idea; inkling”), Yiddish וויץ (vits, “joke”), Danish vid (“wit”), Faroese and Icelandic vit (“intelligence, wits; reason, sense; knowledge; awareness, sentience”), Norwegian Bokmål and Swedish vett (“intelligence, sense, wit”), Norwegian Nynorsk vett, vit (“sense, wits”), Gothic 𐌿𐌽𐍅𐌹𐍄𐌹 (unwiti, “folly, ignorance”); also Breton gouzout (“to know”), Cornish godhvos, goffos (“to know”), Irish feadair (“to know”), Welsh gwybod (“to know”), Latin videō (“to see”), Ancient Greek οἶδ’ (oîd’), οἶδα (oîda, “to know”), Albanian vizë (“line, stripe, track; dash”), Latvian veids (“form, kind, mode, type”), Lithuanian veidas (“face; front; appearance, aspect, look”), Belarusian ве́даць (vjédacʹ, “to know”), Bulgarian вям (vjam, “to know”), Czech vědět (“to know”), Polish wiedzieć (“to know”), Russian ве́дать (védatʹ, “to know”), Serbo-Croatian vedeti, viedieti (“to know”), Slovak vedieť (“to know”), Slovene vedeti (“to know”), Ukrainian ві́дати (vídaty, “to know; to deal, manage”), Armenian գիտեմ (gitem, “I know”), գիտենալ (gitenal), գիտնալ (gitnal, “to know”), Avestan 𐬬𐬀𐬉𐬛 (vaēd, “find”), 𐬬𐬌𐬛 (vid, “know, understand”), Persian نوید (navid / nawīd, nuwēd, “invitation; annunciation; good news”), Tocharian A ime (“awareness, consciousness, memory, thought”), Tocharian B īme (“awareness, consciousness, memory, thought”), ūwe (“educated, knowledgeable, learned”), Sanskrit विद् (vid, “to know; to find; to consider as”). Compare wise. See: Middle English Nouns 'wit', Old English Nouns 'witt', Dutch Nouns 'wit', Danish Nouns 'vid', Norwegian Nynorsk Nouns 'vett', Gothic Nouns '𐌿𐌽𐍅𐌹𐍄𐌹', Latin Nouns 'videō', Latvian Nouns 'veids', Bulgarian Nouns 'вям'.

Verbs referencing "wit"

German Nouns Witz, English Nouns guide, Faroese Nouns vit, Icelandic Nouns vit, Norwegian Nynorsk Nouns vit, Russian Nouns вид, Ancient Greek Nouns εἶδος, Swedish Nouns vett, Danish Nouns vits, Russian Nouns видение, German Nouns Weissager, Gothic Nouns 𐌿𐌽𐍅𐌹𐍄𐌹, English Nouns vitz.