different between plight vs action

English

Pronunciation

• enPR: pl?t, IPA^(key): /pla?t/
• Rhymes: -a?t

Etymology 1

From Middle English plit (“fold, wrinkle, bad situation”), conflation of Middle English pliht, plight (“risky promise, peril”) (from Old English pliht "danger, risk") and Anglo-Norman plit, plyte (“fold, condition”), from Old French pleit (“condition, manner of folding”) (from Vulgar Latin *plictum, from Latin plicitum (“fold”)).

Noun

plight (plural plights)

1. A dire or unfortunate situation. [from 14th c.]
   • 2005, Lesley Brown, translating Plato, Sophist, 243c:

     Though we say we are quite clear about it and understand when someone uses the expression, unlike that other expression, maybe we're in the same plight with regard to them both.
2. (now rare) A (neutral) condition or state. [from 14th c.]
3. (obsolete) Good health. [14th–19th c.]
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.7:

     All wayes shee sought him to restore to plight, / With herbs, with charms, with counsel, and with teares […].

Translations

Etymology 2

From Middle English plight (“risk, danger”), from Old English pliht (“peril, risk, danger, damage, plight”), from Proto-West Germanic *plihti (“care, responsibility, duty”). A suffixed form of the root represented by Old English pleoh (“risk, danger, hurt, peril"; also "responsibility”) and pl?on (“to endanger, risk”). Akin to Old English plihtan (“to endanger, compromise”). Cognate with Scots plicht (“responsibility, plight”), Dutch plicht, Low German plicht (“duty”), German Pflicht (“duty”), Danish pligt (“duty”), Yiddish ??????? (flikht). More at pledge.

Noun

plight (plural plights)

1. (now chiefly dialectal) Responsibility for ensuing consequences; risk; danger; peril.
2. (now chiefly dialectal) An instance of danger or peril; a dangerous moment or situation.
3. (now chiefly dialectal) Blame; culpability; fault; wrong-doing; sin; crime.
4. (now chiefly dialectal) One's office; duty; charge.
5. (archaic) That which is exposed to risk; that which is plighted or pledged; security; a gage; a pledge.

Derived terms

• plightful
• plightly

Translations

Verb

plight (third-person singular simple present plights, present participle plighting, simple past and past participle plighted)

1. (transitive, now rare) To expose to risk; to pledge.
2. (transitive) Specifically, to pledge (one's troth etc.) as part of a marriage ceremony.
3. (reflexive) To promise (oneself) to someone, or to do something.
   • 1992, Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety, Harper Perennial 2007, p. 226:

     I ask what I have done to deserve it, one daughter hobnobbing with radicals and the other planning to plight herself to a criminal.

Derived terms

• plighter

Etymology 3

From Middle English plyghten, ply?ten, pley?ten, pleiten, pliten, from the noun (see below).

Verb

plight (third-person singular simple present plights, present participle plighting, simple past and past participle plighted)

1. (obsolete) To weave; to braid; to fold; to plait.

Etymology 4

From Middle English pli?t, plight, plyt, pleit, from Anglo-Norman pleit (“pleat, fold”). More at plait.

Noun

plight (plural plights)

2. (obsolete) A network; a plait; a fold; rarely a garment.

Further reading

• Plight in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)

English

Etymology

From Middle English accion, from Old French aucion,acciun, from Latin ?cti? (“act of doing or making”), from ?ctus, perfect passive participle of ag? (“do, act”), + action suffix -i?; see act.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?æk.??n/
• Rhymes: -æk??n
• Hyphenation: ac?tion

Noun

action (countable and uncountable, plural actions)

1. Something done, often so as to accomplish a purpose.
2. A way of motion or functioning.

3. Fast-paced activity.

4. A mechanism; a moving part or assembly.

5. (music) The mechanism, that is the set of moving mechanical parts, of a keyboard instrument, like a piano, which transfers the motion of the key to the sound-making device.
6. (music) The distance separating the strings and the fretboard on a guitar.
7. (slang) Sexual intercourse.

8. (military) Combat.

9. (law) A charge or other process in a law court (also called lawsuit and actio).
10. (mathematics) A mapping from a pairing of mathematical objects to one of them, respecting their individual structures. The pairing is typically a Cartesian product or a tensor product. The object that is not part of the output is said to act on the other object. In any given context, action is used as an abbreviation for a more fully named notion, like group action or left group action.
11. (physics) The product of energy and time, especially the product of the Lagrangian and time.
12. The event or connected series of events, either real or imaginary, forming the subject of a play, poem, or other composition; the unfolding of the drama of events.
13. (art, painting and sculpture) The attitude or position of the several parts of the body as expressive of the sentiment or passion depicted.
14. (bowling) spin put on the bowling ball.
15. (obsolete) A share in the capital stock of a joint-stock company, or in the public funds.
    • 1751, Tobias Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, vol. IV, ch. 106:

      So saying he presented him with two actions of above two thousand livres each.

    • 1790, Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

      the Euripus of funds and actions

Synonyms

• (something done): deed; see also Thesaurus:action

Hyponyms

Derived terms

Related terms

Descendants

• ? German: Action
• ? Russian: ???? (ekšn)

Translations

See also

• deed
• Appendix:Collocations of do, have, make, and take

References

• action on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Interjection

action!

1. Demanding or signifying the start of something, usually a performance.

   Antonym: cut

Translations

Verb

action (third-person singular simple present actions, present participle actioning, simple past and past participle actioned)

1. (transitive, management) To act on a request etc, in order to put it into effect.
2. (transitive, chiefly archaic) To initiate a legal action against someone.

Usage notes

• The verb sense action is rejected by some usage authorities.

References

• OED 2nd edition 1989
• Notes:

Further reading

• action in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• action in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

Anagrams

• Catino, actino-, atonic, cation, cation-?

French

Etymology

From Old French acciun, aucion, etymologically reconstructed in Middle French to resemble the Latin acti?.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ak.sj??/
• Homophone: axion

Noun

action f (plural actions)

1. action, act, deed

2. campaign

3. stock, share

4. (Switzerland) a special offer

Derived terms

Further reading

• “action” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Anagrams

• cation, contai

Interlingua

Noun

action (plural actiones)

1. action

Related terms

• active
• activitate

Middle English

Noun

action

1. Alternative form of accion

Middle French

Etymology

From Old French acciun, aucion, etymologically reconstructed to resemble the Latin acti?.

Noun

action f (plural actions)

1. action; act

Descendants

• French: action

Scots

Etymology

From Middle English accion.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ak???n/

Noun

action (plural actions)

1. action

Verb

action (third-person singular present actions, present participle actionin, past actiont, past participle actiont)

1. to action

References

• Eagle, Andy, ed. (2016) The Online Scots Dictionary, Scots Online.