different between whimsy vs wit

English

Alternative forms

• whimsey

Etymology

Probably from whims +? -y. Related to whim-wham, whim.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?w?mzi/, /???mzi/

Noun

whimsy (usually uncountable, plural whimsies)

1. A quaint and fanciful idea; a whim; playfully odd behaviour.
2. An impulsive, illogical or capricious character.
3. (mining) A whim (capstan or vertical drum).
4. A jigsaw puzzle piece that has been cut into a recognizable shape, as if on a whim; often the shape is representative of the theme of the image used for the puzzle.

Translations

Verb

whimsy (third-person singular simple present whimsies, present participle whimsying, simple past and past participle whimsied)

1. (transitive) To fill with whimsies or whims; to make fantastic; to craze.

English

Pronunciation

• enPR: w?t, IPA^(key): /w?t/
• Rhymes: -?t
• Homophone: whit (in accents with the wine-whine merger)

Etymology 1

From Middle English wit, from Old English witt (“understanding, intellect, sense, knowledge, consciousness, conscience”), from Proto-West Germanic *witi, from Proto-Germanic *witj? (“knowledge, reason”), from Proto-Indo-European *weyd- (“see, know”).

Cognate with Dutch weet, German Witz, Danish vid, Swedish vett, Norwegian Bokmål vett, Gothic ???????????????????????? (unwiti, “ignorance”), Latin vide? (“see”), Russian ??????? (vídet?). Compare wise.

Noun

wit (countable and uncountable, plural wits)

1. (now usually in the plural, plural only) Sanity.

2. (obsolete usually in the plural) The senses.
3. Intellectual ability; faculty of thinking, reasoning.

4. The ability to think quickly; mental cleverness, especially under short time constraints.

5. Intelligence; common sense.
   • 1460-1500, The Towneley Plays?

     I give the wit, I give the strength, of all thou seest, of breadth and length; thou shalt be wonder-wise, mirth and joy to have at will, all thy liking to fulfill, and dwell in paradise.

   • 1609, William Shakespeare, Sonnet 23^[1]:

     O, learn to read what silent love hath writ:

     To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.

6. Humour, especially when clever or quick.
   • 1991, Stephen Fry, The Liar, p. 37:

     ...the cemetery—which people of shattering wit like Sampson never tired of calling ‘the dead centre of town’...

7. A person who tells funny anecdotes or jokes; someone witty.

Synonyms

• (intellectual ability): See also Thesaurus:intelligence

Derived terms

Translations

See also

(type of humor):

• acid
• biting
• cutting
• lambent

Etymology 2

From Middle English witen, from Old English witan, from Proto-West Germanic *witan, from Proto-Germanic *witan?, from Proto-Indo-European *weyd- (“see, know”).

Cognate with Icelandic vita, Dutch weten, German wissen, Swedish veta, and Latin vide? (“I see”). Compare guide.

Verb

wit (see below for this verb’s conjugation)

2. (transitive, intransitive, chiefly archaic) Know, be aware of (constructed with of when used intransitively).
   • 1611, King James Version, Exodus 2:3–4:

     And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river's brink. And his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done to him.

   • 1849, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, St. Luke the Painter, lines 5–8

     but soon having wist

     How sky-breadth and field-silence and this day

     Are symbols also in some deeper way,

     She looked through these to God and was God’s priest.

Usage notes

• As a preterite-present verb, the third-person singular indicative form is not wits but wot; the plural indicative forms conform to the infinitive: we wit, ye wit, they wit.
• To wit is now defective because it can only be used in the infinitive.

Conjugation

Derived terms

• bewit
• to wit
• unwitting
• witness

Translations

Etymology 3

From with.

Pronunciation

• (Southern American English) (before consonants) IPA^(key): /w?t/, (before yod) /w?t?/

Preposition

wit

1. (Southern US) Pronunciation spelling of with.

Anagrams

• Tiw, Twi, twi-

Afrikaans

Etymology

From Dutch wit, from Middle Dutch wit, from Old Dutch *wit, from Proto-Germanic *hwittaz.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /v?t/

Adjective

wit (attributive witte, comparative witter, superlative witste)

1. white

Balinese

Noun

wit

1. tree

   Wénten wit poh akéh ring Nagara.

   There are many mango trees in Nagara.

Belizean Creole

Preposition

wit

1. Alternative form of wid

References

• Crosbie, Paul, ed. (2007), Kriol-Inglish Dikshineri: English-Kriol Dictionary. Belize City: Belize Kriol Project, p. 374.

Dutch

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /??t/
• Hyphenation: wit
• Rhymes: -?t

Etymology 1

From Middle Dutch wit, from Old Dutch *wit, from Proto-Germanic *hwittaz. The geminate is unexpected as the usual Proto-Germanic form is *hw?taz, from Proto-Indo-European *?weytos (“shine; bright”). The geminate is sometimes explained as being the result of Kluge's law, thus from a pre-Germanic *kweyd-nos.

Adjective

wit (comparative witter, superlative witst)

1. white

2. (chiefly Surinam) having a white skin colour, light-skinned (see usage note)
3. (Surinam) having a relatively light skin colour
4. legal
5. pure, untainted
6. (archaic) clear-lighted, not dark at all

Usage notes

Recently, wit has come to be used in continental Dutch by some (associated with social justice movements) to refer to a specific skin colour, i.e. to light-skinned people of apparent mostly European descent. Traditionally, the adjective blank has been used there for this purpose, and this usage is by far the most widespread in the Netherlands and Belgium.

Inflection

Synonyms

• blank

Antonyms

• zwart

Derived terms

• witte dovenetel, witte klaver, witwassen

Related terms

• wijting

Noun

wit n (plural witten, diminutive witje n)

1. (uncountable) white (color)

2. (archaic) (short for doelwit (“goal, target, the white in a bullseye”))

3. (slang) cocaine
   • 2011, Esther Schenk, Straatwaarde, Luitingh-Sijthoff B.V., ?ISBN.

   • 2014, Helen Vreeswijk, Overdosis, Unieboek | Het Spectrum, ?ISBN.

Derived terms

• eiwit

Descendants

• Afrikaans: wit

Verb

wit

1. first-, second- and third-person singular present indicative of witten
2. imperative of witten

See also

Etymology 2

From Middle Dutch wit. Ultimately from Proto-West Germanic *witi, from Proto-Germanic *witj? (“knowledge, reason”), from Proto-Indo-European *weyd- (“see, know”). Related to weten (“to know”), wis (“knowledge”) and wijs (“wise”). Cognate with English wit, German Witz.

Noun

wit n (plural witten, diminutive witje n)

1. (archaic) ability to think and reason
2. (archaic) knowledge

Related terms

• wittig, wittigen, wittiger, verwittigen

Anagrams

• Twi

Gothic

Romanization

wit

1. Romanization of ????????????

Javanese

Noun

wit

1. tree

   Akèh wit pelem ing Semarang.

   There are many mango trees in Semarang.

Louisiana Creole French

Etymology

From French huit.

Numeral

wit

1. eight

Mauritian Creole

Etymology

From French huit.

Numeral

wit

1. eight

Middle Dutch

Etymology

From Old Dutch *wit, from Proto-Germanic *hwittaz. The long-vowel variant wijt is from Old Dutch w?t, from Proto-West Germanic *hw?t, from Proto-Germanic *hw?taz.

Adjective

wit

1. white
2. clean
3. pale (of skin)

Inflection

This adjective needs an inflection-table template.

Alternative forms

• wijt

Descendants

• Dutch: wit
• Limburgish: wiet

Further reading

• “wit”, in Vroegmiddelnederlands Woordenboek, 2000
• Verwijs, E.; Verdam, J. (1885–1929) , “wit (I)”, in Middelnederlandsch Woordenboek, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, ?ISBN, page I

Middle English

Alternative forms

• wyt, witt

Etymology

from Old English wit (“we two”), from Proto-West Germanic *wit, from Proto-Germanic *wet. Compare the first-person plural pronoun we.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /wit/

Pronoun

wit (accusative unk, genitive unker, possessive determiner unker)

1. (Early Middle English) First-person dual pronoun: we twain, the two of us.

See also

References

• “wit, pron.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 11 May 2018.

North Frisian

Etymology

From Old Frisian hw?t, from Proto-West Germanic *hw?t, from Proto-Germanic *hw?taz. Compare West Frisian wyt.

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): /v?t/

Adjective

wit

1. (Sylt) white

Old English

Etymology

From Proto-West Germanic *wit, from Proto-Germanic *wet, from Proto-Indo-European *wed-, a suffixed form of *wey- (see w?). Cognate with North Frisian wat, Old Norse vit, Gothic ???????????? (wit), and Lithuanian vèdu.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /wit/

Pronoun

wit (personal)

1. we two; nominative dual of i?

Old French

Etymology

Spelling variant of uit

Numeral

wit

1. eight

Old High German

Etymology

From Proto-Germanic *w?daz, whence also Old Saxon w?t, Old English w?d and Old Norse víðr.

Adjective

w?t

1. wide

Descendants

• Middle High German: w?t
  • Central Franconian: weck
  • German: weit
  • Luxembourgish: wäit
  • Yiddish: ?????? (vayt)

Old Saxon

Etymology

From Proto-West Germanic *wit, from Proto-Germanic *wet. Accusative from Proto-Germanic *unk, dative from *unkiz.

Pronoun

wit

1. we two; nominative dual of ik

Declension

Tok Pisin

Etymology

From English wheat.

Noun

wit

1. wheat