Wight and Wiht is white?
Wight is pronounced "white". Wight can be found as "wiht". I have heard people pronounce this as "wit". Is this mispronounced or for example dutch white = WIT?
pronunciation
New contributor
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show 2 more comments
Wight is pronounced "white". Wight can be found as "wiht". I have heard people pronounce this as "wit". Is this mispronounced or for example dutch white = WIT?
pronunciation
New contributor
2
If you're speaking of the place name (Isle of Wight), then you should ask the people who live there how it's pronounced. Spelling is not a good guide to pronunciation in any case, and with place names it becomes almost irrelevant.
– John Lawler
7 hours ago
Hello, not speaking of place names. Specifically, I recall reading a book where "Wight", defined as a spirit, ghost, or other supernatural being was written as "wiht". This would also be pronounced as "white". However, I recently heard someone pronounce "Wight"(pronounced white) as "wit" and I became curious if that was a mispronunciation on their part as wit in dutch seems to translate to "White/pale".
– SOTF1
7 hours ago
2
What were you reading where "wight" was spelled "wiht"? That's a Middle English spelling of the word.
– Laurel
7 hours ago
2
"Withoute blame of eny wiht. / Anon sche sende for this kniht." (src) Yeah that checks out, since John Gower wrote in Middle English and was even friends with Chaucer. But "wiht" is only one spelling out of ~40 that the word has had over the years. In any case I'm not sure how this is relevant to your question.
– Laurel
5 hours ago
1
We're not talking about with but wight. And with was spelled wiþ in Old English.
– Peter Shor
4 hours ago
|
show 2 more comments
Wight is pronounced "white". Wight can be found as "wiht". I have heard people pronounce this as "wit". Is this mispronounced or for example dutch white = WIT?
pronunciation
New contributor
Wight is pronounced "white". Wight can be found as "wiht". I have heard people pronounce this as "wit". Is this mispronounced or for example dutch white = WIT?
pronunciation
pronunciation
New contributor
New contributor
New contributor
asked 8 hours ago
SOTF1SOTF1
1
1
New contributor
New contributor
2
If you're speaking of the place name (Isle of Wight), then you should ask the people who live there how it's pronounced. Spelling is not a good guide to pronunciation in any case, and with place names it becomes almost irrelevant.
– John Lawler
7 hours ago
Hello, not speaking of place names. Specifically, I recall reading a book where "Wight", defined as a spirit, ghost, or other supernatural being was written as "wiht". This would also be pronounced as "white". However, I recently heard someone pronounce "Wight"(pronounced white) as "wit" and I became curious if that was a mispronunciation on their part as wit in dutch seems to translate to "White/pale".
– SOTF1
7 hours ago
2
What were you reading where "wight" was spelled "wiht"? That's a Middle English spelling of the word.
– Laurel
7 hours ago
2
"Withoute blame of eny wiht. / Anon sche sende for this kniht." (src) Yeah that checks out, since John Gower wrote in Middle English and was even friends with Chaucer. But "wiht" is only one spelling out of ~40 that the word has had over the years. In any case I'm not sure how this is relevant to your question.
– Laurel
5 hours ago
1
We're not talking about with but wight. And with was spelled wiþ in Old English.
– Peter Shor
4 hours ago
|
show 2 more comments
2
If you're speaking of the place name (Isle of Wight), then you should ask the people who live there how it's pronounced. Spelling is not a good guide to pronunciation in any case, and with place names it becomes almost irrelevant.
– John Lawler
7 hours ago
Hello, not speaking of place names. Specifically, I recall reading a book where "Wight", defined as a spirit, ghost, or other supernatural being was written as "wiht". This would also be pronounced as "white". However, I recently heard someone pronounce "Wight"(pronounced white) as "wit" and I became curious if that was a mispronunciation on their part as wit in dutch seems to translate to "White/pale".
– SOTF1
7 hours ago
2
What were you reading where "wight" was spelled "wiht"? That's a Middle English spelling of the word.
– Laurel
7 hours ago
2
"Withoute blame of eny wiht. / Anon sche sende for this kniht." (src) Yeah that checks out, since John Gower wrote in Middle English and was even friends with Chaucer. But "wiht" is only one spelling out of ~40 that the word has had over the years. In any case I'm not sure how this is relevant to your question.
– Laurel
5 hours ago
1
We're not talking about with but wight. And with was spelled wiþ in Old English.
– Peter Shor
4 hours ago
2
2
If you're speaking of the place name (Isle of Wight), then you should ask the people who live there how it's pronounced. Spelling is not a good guide to pronunciation in any case, and with place names it becomes almost irrelevant.
– John Lawler
7 hours ago
If you're speaking of the place name (Isle of Wight), then you should ask the people who live there how it's pronounced. Spelling is not a good guide to pronunciation in any case, and with place names it becomes almost irrelevant.
– John Lawler
7 hours ago
Hello, not speaking of place names. Specifically, I recall reading a book where "Wight", defined as a spirit, ghost, or other supernatural being was written as "wiht". This would also be pronounced as "white". However, I recently heard someone pronounce "Wight"(pronounced white) as "wit" and I became curious if that was a mispronunciation on their part as wit in dutch seems to translate to "White/pale".
– SOTF1
7 hours ago
Hello, not speaking of place names. Specifically, I recall reading a book where "Wight", defined as a spirit, ghost, or other supernatural being was written as "wiht". This would also be pronounced as "white". However, I recently heard someone pronounce "Wight"(pronounced white) as "wit" and I became curious if that was a mispronunciation on their part as wit in dutch seems to translate to "White/pale".
– SOTF1
7 hours ago
2
2
What were you reading where "wight" was spelled "wiht"? That's a Middle English spelling of the word.
– Laurel
7 hours ago
What were you reading where "wight" was spelled "wiht"? That's a Middle English spelling of the word.
– Laurel
7 hours ago
2
2
"Withoute blame of eny wiht. / Anon sche sende for this kniht." (src) Yeah that checks out, since John Gower wrote in Middle English and was even friends with Chaucer. But "wiht" is only one spelling out of ~40 that the word has had over the years. In any case I'm not sure how this is relevant to your question.
– Laurel
5 hours ago
"Withoute blame of eny wiht. / Anon sche sende for this kniht." (src) Yeah that checks out, since John Gower wrote in Middle English and was even friends with Chaucer. But "wiht" is only one spelling out of ~40 that the word has had over the years. In any case I'm not sure how this is relevant to your question.
– Laurel
5 hours ago
1
1
We're not talking about with but wight. And with was spelled wiþ in Old English.
– Peter Shor
4 hours ago
We're not talking about with but wight. And with was spelled wiþ in Old English.
– Peter Shor
4 hours ago
|
show 2 more comments
2 Answers
2
active
oldest
votes
Wight is etymologically unrelated to white. The former is pronounced /waɪt/; the latter is pronounced /waɪt/ (the same as wight) or, in certain conservative accents, /hwaɪt/ or /ʍaɪt/ (the transcriptions /hw/ and /ʍ/ don't contrast; the difference is just that the transcription /hw/ implies analyzing the "wh" sound as two phonemes, and the transcription /ʍ/ implies analyzing the "wh" sound as one phoneme).
Dutch wit /ʋɪt/ is just a cognate of white, with a hard-to-explain difference in vowel length (which in older versions of the language apparently went along with a long /tː/ sound after the vowel). Its pronunciation has nothing to do with wight either. The Dutch cognate of wight is wicht /ʋɪxt/.
Both wight and white have the "/aɪ/" diphthong sound (the vowel found in the word price) because of the "Great Vowel Shift". Before the Great Vowel Shift, these words were pronounced with /iː/. In the word white, this goes back to Old English forms with a long vowel. In the word wight, the long vowel developed during the Middle English time period from an earlier short vowel + consonant sequence that can be transcribed /ih/, or possibly /ix/. The /h/ or /x/ sound here was a voiceless fricative consonant. As in German, the sound /x/ was probably assimilated to the palatal fricative [ç] when it followed the "front vowel" /i/. Early on, the spelling "h" was often used for /x/, but in modern English, the digraph "gh" has completely replaced earlier spellings with "h" in words that once had /x/. The spelling wiht is even more obsolete than the word; as Laurel said, wiht really ought to be thought of as a Middle English spelling, not a modern English one. The Middle English word wiht would have been pronounced something like [wɪçt], [wiçt], [wiːçt], or [wiːt].
Vowel sounds could develop differently in different dialects or in different contexts. For example, /(h)wɪt/, with a "short i" sound, is used as the pronunciation of the combining element Whit-, which is derived from white. (Some examples: Whitsunday, Whitman.) Wight is the (hard to recognize) source of the final element of the words nought/naught, not, and ought/aught. If the word wight has actually survived as part of the living vocabulary of any currently spoken English dialect (I don't know whether it has), it wouldn't be too surprising if the speakers of that dialect used some pronunciation other than /waɪt/.
The word whit (/(h)wɪt/) has unclear etymology, but might be related to either wight or white according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
When the word wight is used to refer to a creature in the context of fantasy (e.g. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings), neither the spelling wiht nor the pronunciation /wɪt/ seems sensible to me. The spelling wiht could be justified as an Old-Englishism, but I know of no justification for using the pronunciation /wɪt/ in that context. If you have heard it, I'd guess it was a mispronunciation based on the spelling pattern "ih" = /ɪ/ that is used in some ad hoc representations of English vowel sounds. Many words used in fantasy are first encountered in writing, and therefore commonly mispronounced (although the term "mispronunciation" is only applicable insofar as they can be said to have any standard pronunciation at all).
add a comment |
The word "wight" is pronounced like "white" and historically has meant "creature" or more especially "human being" or "man". Sources can be found from Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, Spencer, and more all using the word in this way. See Wikipedia's page for Wight for a collection of references.
More recently, a second meaning has emerged among fantasy authors who use the word to describe an undead spirit or a particular type of ghost. The earliest use of the word in this way that I know comes from Tolkien in his collected lore of Middle Earth (a barrow-wight, an evil spirit which threatens Frodo's party in the early journey of The Fellowship of the Ring). I can only speculate why Tolkien used the word in this way. The presence of the ghost in a barrow is reminiscent of Old Norse legends of vǣttr ("being"), a word which is etymologically linked to "wight", or draugr ("reanimated dead" with a distinctly evil qualification).
Wight is definitely not pronounced like "wit". It has been pronounced like the modern "white" in all its various forms over many hundreds of years, from Old English "wiht".
Only if you have the whether–weather merger.
– tchrist♦
4 hours ago
Old English "wiht" was not pronounced like the modern "white" (or the Old English cognate of "white"). In Old English, "ih" represented a vowel-consonant sequence, not a long vowel or diphthong. The merger between -ite and -ight rhymes only occurred in later stages of Middle English.
– sumelic
4 hours ago
add a comment |
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Wight is etymologically unrelated to white. The former is pronounced /waɪt/; the latter is pronounced /waɪt/ (the same as wight) or, in certain conservative accents, /hwaɪt/ or /ʍaɪt/ (the transcriptions /hw/ and /ʍ/ don't contrast; the difference is just that the transcription /hw/ implies analyzing the "wh" sound as two phonemes, and the transcription /ʍ/ implies analyzing the "wh" sound as one phoneme).
Dutch wit /ʋɪt/ is just a cognate of white, with a hard-to-explain difference in vowel length (which in older versions of the language apparently went along with a long /tː/ sound after the vowel). Its pronunciation has nothing to do with wight either. The Dutch cognate of wight is wicht /ʋɪxt/.
Both wight and white have the "/aɪ/" diphthong sound (the vowel found in the word price) because of the "Great Vowel Shift". Before the Great Vowel Shift, these words were pronounced with /iː/. In the word white, this goes back to Old English forms with a long vowel. In the word wight, the long vowel developed during the Middle English time period from an earlier short vowel + consonant sequence that can be transcribed /ih/, or possibly /ix/. The /h/ or /x/ sound here was a voiceless fricative consonant. As in German, the sound /x/ was probably assimilated to the palatal fricative [ç] when it followed the "front vowel" /i/. Early on, the spelling "h" was often used for /x/, but in modern English, the digraph "gh" has completely replaced earlier spellings with "h" in words that once had /x/. The spelling wiht is even more obsolete than the word; as Laurel said, wiht really ought to be thought of as a Middle English spelling, not a modern English one. The Middle English word wiht would have been pronounced something like [wɪçt], [wiçt], [wiːçt], or [wiːt].
Vowel sounds could develop differently in different dialects or in different contexts. For example, /(h)wɪt/, with a "short i" sound, is used as the pronunciation of the combining element Whit-, which is derived from white. (Some examples: Whitsunday, Whitman.) Wight is the (hard to recognize) source of the final element of the words nought/naught, not, and ought/aught. If the word wight has actually survived as part of the living vocabulary of any currently spoken English dialect (I don't know whether it has), it wouldn't be too surprising if the speakers of that dialect used some pronunciation other than /waɪt/.
The word whit (/(h)wɪt/) has unclear etymology, but might be related to either wight or white according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
When the word wight is used to refer to a creature in the context of fantasy (e.g. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings), neither the spelling wiht nor the pronunciation /wɪt/ seems sensible to me. The spelling wiht could be justified as an Old-Englishism, but I know of no justification for using the pronunciation /wɪt/ in that context. If you have heard it, I'd guess it was a mispronunciation based on the spelling pattern "ih" = /ɪ/ that is used in some ad hoc representations of English vowel sounds. Many words used in fantasy are first encountered in writing, and therefore commonly mispronounced (although the term "mispronunciation" is only applicable insofar as they can be said to have any standard pronunciation at all).
add a comment |
Wight is etymologically unrelated to white. The former is pronounced /waɪt/; the latter is pronounced /waɪt/ (the same as wight) or, in certain conservative accents, /hwaɪt/ or /ʍaɪt/ (the transcriptions /hw/ and /ʍ/ don't contrast; the difference is just that the transcription /hw/ implies analyzing the "wh" sound as two phonemes, and the transcription /ʍ/ implies analyzing the "wh" sound as one phoneme).
Dutch wit /ʋɪt/ is just a cognate of white, with a hard-to-explain difference in vowel length (which in older versions of the language apparently went along with a long /tː/ sound after the vowel). Its pronunciation has nothing to do with wight either. The Dutch cognate of wight is wicht /ʋɪxt/.
Both wight and white have the "/aɪ/" diphthong sound (the vowel found in the word price) because of the "Great Vowel Shift". Before the Great Vowel Shift, these words were pronounced with /iː/. In the word white, this goes back to Old English forms with a long vowel. In the word wight, the long vowel developed during the Middle English time period from an earlier short vowel + consonant sequence that can be transcribed /ih/, or possibly /ix/. The /h/ or /x/ sound here was a voiceless fricative consonant. As in German, the sound /x/ was probably assimilated to the palatal fricative [ç] when it followed the "front vowel" /i/. Early on, the spelling "h" was often used for /x/, but in modern English, the digraph "gh" has completely replaced earlier spellings with "h" in words that once had /x/. The spelling wiht is even more obsolete than the word; as Laurel said, wiht really ought to be thought of as a Middle English spelling, not a modern English one. The Middle English word wiht would have been pronounced something like [wɪçt], [wiçt], [wiːçt], or [wiːt].
Vowel sounds could develop differently in different dialects or in different contexts. For example, /(h)wɪt/, with a "short i" sound, is used as the pronunciation of the combining element Whit-, which is derived from white. (Some examples: Whitsunday, Whitman.) Wight is the (hard to recognize) source of the final element of the words nought/naught, not, and ought/aught. If the word wight has actually survived as part of the living vocabulary of any currently spoken English dialect (I don't know whether it has), it wouldn't be too surprising if the speakers of that dialect used some pronunciation other than /waɪt/.
The word whit (/(h)wɪt/) has unclear etymology, but might be related to either wight or white according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
When the word wight is used to refer to a creature in the context of fantasy (e.g. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings), neither the spelling wiht nor the pronunciation /wɪt/ seems sensible to me. The spelling wiht could be justified as an Old-Englishism, but I know of no justification for using the pronunciation /wɪt/ in that context. If you have heard it, I'd guess it was a mispronunciation based on the spelling pattern "ih" = /ɪ/ that is used in some ad hoc representations of English vowel sounds. Many words used in fantasy are first encountered in writing, and therefore commonly mispronounced (although the term "mispronunciation" is only applicable insofar as they can be said to have any standard pronunciation at all).
add a comment |
Wight is etymologically unrelated to white. The former is pronounced /waɪt/; the latter is pronounced /waɪt/ (the same as wight) or, in certain conservative accents, /hwaɪt/ or /ʍaɪt/ (the transcriptions /hw/ and /ʍ/ don't contrast; the difference is just that the transcription /hw/ implies analyzing the "wh" sound as two phonemes, and the transcription /ʍ/ implies analyzing the "wh" sound as one phoneme).
Dutch wit /ʋɪt/ is just a cognate of white, with a hard-to-explain difference in vowel length (which in older versions of the language apparently went along with a long /tː/ sound after the vowel). Its pronunciation has nothing to do with wight either. The Dutch cognate of wight is wicht /ʋɪxt/.
Both wight and white have the "/aɪ/" diphthong sound (the vowel found in the word price) because of the "Great Vowel Shift". Before the Great Vowel Shift, these words were pronounced with /iː/. In the word white, this goes back to Old English forms with a long vowel. In the word wight, the long vowel developed during the Middle English time period from an earlier short vowel + consonant sequence that can be transcribed /ih/, or possibly /ix/. The /h/ or /x/ sound here was a voiceless fricative consonant. As in German, the sound /x/ was probably assimilated to the palatal fricative [ç] when it followed the "front vowel" /i/. Early on, the spelling "h" was often used for /x/, but in modern English, the digraph "gh" has completely replaced earlier spellings with "h" in words that once had /x/. The spelling wiht is even more obsolete than the word; as Laurel said, wiht really ought to be thought of as a Middle English spelling, not a modern English one. The Middle English word wiht would have been pronounced something like [wɪçt], [wiçt], [wiːçt], or [wiːt].
Vowel sounds could develop differently in different dialects or in different contexts. For example, /(h)wɪt/, with a "short i" sound, is used as the pronunciation of the combining element Whit-, which is derived from white. (Some examples: Whitsunday, Whitman.) Wight is the (hard to recognize) source of the final element of the words nought/naught, not, and ought/aught. If the word wight has actually survived as part of the living vocabulary of any currently spoken English dialect (I don't know whether it has), it wouldn't be too surprising if the speakers of that dialect used some pronunciation other than /waɪt/.
The word whit (/(h)wɪt/) has unclear etymology, but might be related to either wight or white according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
When the word wight is used to refer to a creature in the context of fantasy (e.g. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings), neither the spelling wiht nor the pronunciation /wɪt/ seems sensible to me. The spelling wiht could be justified as an Old-Englishism, but I know of no justification for using the pronunciation /wɪt/ in that context. If you have heard it, I'd guess it was a mispronunciation based on the spelling pattern "ih" = /ɪ/ that is used in some ad hoc representations of English vowel sounds. Many words used in fantasy are first encountered in writing, and therefore commonly mispronounced (although the term "mispronunciation" is only applicable insofar as they can be said to have any standard pronunciation at all).
Wight is etymologically unrelated to white. The former is pronounced /waɪt/; the latter is pronounced /waɪt/ (the same as wight) or, in certain conservative accents, /hwaɪt/ or /ʍaɪt/ (the transcriptions /hw/ and /ʍ/ don't contrast; the difference is just that the transcription /hw/ implies analyzing the "wh" sound as two phonemes, and the transcription /ʍ/ implies analyzing the "wh" sound as one phoneme).
Dutch wit /ʋɪt/ is just a cognate of white, with a hard-to-explain difference in vowel length (which in older versions of the language apparently went along with a long /tː/ sound after the vowel). Its pronunciation has nothing to do with wight either. The Dutch cognate of wight is wicht /ʋɪxt/.
Both wight and white have the "/aɪ/" diphthong sound (the vowel found in the word price) because of the "Great Vowel Shift". Before the Great Vowel Shift, these words were pronounced with /iː/. In the word white, this goes back to Old English forms with a long vowel. In the word wight, the long vowel developed during the Middle English time period from an earlier short vowel + consonant sequence that can be transcribed /ih/, or possibly /ix/. The /h/ or /x/ sound here was a voiceless fricative consonant. As in German, the sound /x/ was probably assimilated to the palatal fricative [ç] when it followed the "front vowel" /i/. Early on, the spelling "h" was often used for /x/, but in modern English, the digraph "gh" has completely replaced earlier spellings with "h" in words that once had /x/. The spelling wiht is even more obsolete than the word; as Laurel said, wiht really ought to be thought of as a Middle English spelling, not a modern English one. The Middle English word wiht would have been pronounced something like [wɪçt], [wiçt], [wiːçt], or [wiːt].
Vowel sounds could develop differently in different dialects or in different contexts. For example, /(h)wɪt/, with a "short i" sound, is used as the pronunciation of the combining element Whit-, which is derived from white. (Some examples: Whitsunday, Whitman.) Wight is the (hard to recognize) source of the final element of the words nought/naught, not, and ought/aught. If the word wight has actually survived as part of the living vocabulary of any currently spoken English dialect (I don't know whether it has), it wouldn't be too surprising if the speakers of that dialect used some pronunciation other than /waɪt/.
The word whit (/(h)wɪt/) has unclear etymology, but might be related to either wight or white according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
When the word wight is used to refer to a creature in the context of fantasy (e.g. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings), neither the spelling wiht nor the pronunciation /wɪt/ seems sensible to me. The spelling wiht could be justified as an Old-Englishism, but I know of no justification for using the pronunciation /wɪt/ in that context. If you have heard it, I'd guess it was a mispronunciation based on the spelling pattern "ih" = /ɪ/ that is used in some ad hoc representations of English vowel sounds. Many words used in fantasy are first encountered in writing, and therefore commonly mispronounced (although the term "mispronunciation" is only applicable insofar as they can be said to have any standard pronunciation at all).
edited 3 hours ago
answered 4 hours ago
sumelicsumelic
49.3k8116223
49.3k8116223
add a comment |
add a comment |
The word "wight" is pronounced like "white" and historically has meant "creature" or more especially "human being" or "man". Sources can be found from Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, Spencer, and more all using the word in this way. See Wikipedia's page for Wight for a collection of references.
More recently, a second meaning has emerged among fantasy authors who use the word to describe an undead spirit or a particular type of ghost. The earliest use of the word in this way that I know comes from Tolkien in his collected lore of Middle Earth (a barrow-wight, an evil spirit which threatens Frodo's party in the early journey of The Fellowship of the Ring). I can only speculate why Tolkien used the word in this way. The presence of the ghost in a barrow is reminiscent of Old Norse legends of vǣttr ("being"), a word which is etymologically linked to "wight", or draugr ("reanimated dead" with a distinctly evil qualification).
Wight is definitely not pronounced like "wit". It has been pronounced like the modern "white" in all its various forms over many hundreds of years, from Old English "wiht".
Only if you have the whether–weather merger.
– tchrist♦
4 hours ago
Old English "wiht" was not pronounced like the modern "white" (or the Old English cognate of "white"). In Old English, "ih" represented a vowel-consonant sequence, not a long vowel or diphthong. The merger between -ite and -ight rhymes only occurred in later stages of Middle English.
– sumelic
4 hours ago
add a comment |
The word "wight" is pronounced like "white" and historically has meant "creature" or more especially "human being" or "man". Sources can be found from Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, Spencer, and more all using the word in this way. See Wikipedia's page for Wight for a collection of references.
More recently, a second meaning has emerged among fantasy authors who use the word to describe an undead spirit or a particular type of ghost. The earliest use of the word in this way that I know comes from Tolkien in his collected lore of Middle Earth (a barrow-wight, an evil spirit which threatens Frodo's party in the early journey of The Fellowship of the Ring). I can only speculate why Tolkien used the word in this way. The presence of the ghost in a barrow is reminiscent of Old Norse legends of vǣttr ("being"), a word which is etymologically linked to "wight", or draugr ("reanimated dead" with a distinctly evil qualification).
Wight is definitely not pronounced like "wit". It has been pronounced like the modern "white" in all its various forms over many hundreds of years, from Old English "wiht".
Only if you have the whether–weather merger.
– tchrist♦
4 hours ago
Old English "wiht" was not pronounced like the modern "white" (or the Old English cognate of "white"). In Old English, "ih" represented a vowel-consonant sequence, not a long vowel or diphthong. The merger between -ite and -ight rhymes only occurred in later stages of Middle English.
– sumelic
4 hours ago
add a comment |
The word "wight" is pronounced like "white" and historically has meant "creature" or more especially "human being" or "man". Sources can be found from Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, Spencer, and more all using the word in this way. See Wikipedia's page for Wight for a collection of references.
More recently, a second meaning has emerged among fantasy authors who use the word to describe an undead spirit or a particular type of ghost. The earliest use of the word in this way that I know comes from Tolkien in his collected lore of Middle Earth (a barrow-wight, an evil spirit which threatens Frodo's party in the early journey of The Fellowship of the Ring). I can only speculate why Tolkien used the word in this way. The presence of the ghost in a barrow is reminiscent of Old Norse legends of vǣttr ("being"), a word which is etymologically linked to "wight", or draugr ("reanimated dead" with a distinctly evil qualification).
Wight is definitely not pronounced like "wit". It has been pronounced like the modern "white" in all its various forms over many hundreds of years, from Old English "wiht".
The word "wight" is pronounced like "white" and historically has meant "creature" or more especially "human being" or "man". Sources can be found from Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, Spencer, and more all using the word in this way. See Wikipedia's page for Wight for a collection of references.
More recently, a second meaning has emerged among fantasy authors who use the word to describe an undead spirit or a particular type of ghost. The earliest use of the word in this way that I know comes from Tolkien in his collected lore of Middle Earth (a barrow-wight, an evil spirit which threatens Frodo's party in the early journey of The Fellowship of the Ring). I can only speculate why Tolkien used the word in this way. The presence of the ghost in a barrow is reminiscent of Old Norse legends of vǣttr ("being"), a word which is etymologically linked to "wight", or draugr ("reanimated dead" with a distinctly evil qualification).
Wight is definitely not pronounced like "wit". It has been pronounced like the modern "white" in all its various forms over many hundreds of years, from Old English "wiht".
answered 4 hours ago
R MacR Mac
2,363513
2,363513
Only if you have the whether–weather merger.
– tchrist♦
4 hours ago
Old English "wiht" was not pronounced like the modern "white" (or the Old English cognate of "white"). In Old English, "ih" represented a vowel-consonant sequence, not a long vowel or diphthong. The merger between -ite and -ight rhymes only occurred in later stages of Middle English.
– sumelic
4 hours ago
add a comment |
Only if you have the whether–weather merger.
– tchrist♦
4 hours ago
Old English "wiht" was not pronounced like the modern "white" (or the Old English cognate of "white"). In Old English, "ih" represented a vowel-consonant sequence, not a long vowel or diphthong. The merger between -ite and -ight rhymes only occurred in later stages of Middle English.
– sumelic
4 hours ago
Only if you have the whether–weather merger.
– tchrist♦
4 hours ago
Only if you have the whether–weather merger.
– tchrist♦
4 hours ago
Old English "wiht" was not pronounced like the modern "white" (or the Old English cognate of "white"). In Old English, "ih" represented a vowel-consonant sequence, not a long vowel or diphthong. The merger between -ite and -ight rhymes only occurred in later stages of Middle English.
– sumelic
4 hours ago
Old English "wiht" was not pronounced like the modern "white" (or the Old English cognate of "white"). In Old English, "ih" represented a vowel-consonant sequence, not a long vowel or diphthong. The merger between -ite and -ight rhymes only occurred in later stages of Middle English.
– sumelic
4 hours ago
add a comment |
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2
If you're speaking of the place name (Isle of Wight), then you should ask the people who live there how it's pronounced. Spelling is not a good guide to pronunciation in any case, and with place names it becomes almost irrelevant.
– John Lawler
7 hours ago
Hello, not speaking of place names. Specifically, I recall reading a book where "Wight", defined as a spirit, ghost, or other supernatural being was written as "wiht". This would also be pronounced as "white". However, I recently heard someone pronounce "Wight"(pronounced white) as "wit" and I became curious if that was a mispronunciation on their part as wit in dutch seems to translate to "White/pale".
– SOTF1
7 hours ago
2
What were you reading where "wight" was spelled "wiht"? That's a Middle English spelling of the word.
– Laurel
7 hours ago
2
"Withoute blame of eny wiht. / Anon sche sende for this kniht." (src) Yeah that checks out, since John Gower wrote in Middle English and was even friends with Chaucer. But "wiht" is only one spelling out of ~40 that the word has had over the years. In any case I'm not sure how this is relevant to your question.
– Laurel
5 hours ago
1
We're not talking about with but wight. And with was spelled wiþ in Old English.
– Peter Shor
4 hours ago