A living being; a creature.
[Middle English, from Old English wiht.]
wight2 (wīt)

adj. Archaic.
Valorous; brave.
[Middle English, from Old Norse vīgt, neuter of vīgr, able to fight.]
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A living being; a creature.
[Middle English, from Old English wiht.]

Valorous; brave.
[Middle English, from Old Norse vīgt, neuter of vīgr, able to fight.]
The noun has one meaning:
Meaning #1:
a human being; `wight' is an archaic term
Synonym: creature
Wight is a Middle English word for a creature or a living being, especially a human being.[1] In modern English today, it is also used in fiction for human-like creatures. Wight derives from the same root as forms of to be, such as was and were. Modern German "Wicht" is a cognate, meaning "small person, dwarf", and also "unpleasant person"; in Low German it means "girl". It is not related to the English word "witch".
Wight comes from Old English word wiht, akin to Old High German wiht, meaning a creature or thing.[2] The word is a cognate with Dutch wicht, German Wicht, Old Norse vættir and Swedish vätte.
Examples of the word used in classic English literature and poetry:
Wight has been used comparatively recently to give an impression of archaism and mystery in literature, for example in the fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien, where wights are corpses with a part of their decayed soul. Probably inspired by Scandinavian folklore (of vættir), Tolkien also used the word to denote human-like creatures, such as elves or ghosts ("wraiths") - most notably the undead Barrow-Wights. Some subsequent writers seem to have been unaware that the word did not actually mean ghost or wraith, and so many works of fantasy fiction, role-playing games and computer and video games use the term as the name of spectral creatures very similar to Tolkien's Barrow-wights, such as Dungeons & Dragons' wights.
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![]() | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more | |
![]() | WordNet. WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. Read more | |
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