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wit

/wɪt/ symbol

In Latin: ingenium Wiktionary

symbol Definition from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). Pronunciation from Wiktionary, via Kaikki.org. More about wit at Wordnik → Where our words come from →

  1. Former ISO 639-3 language code for Wintu.

noun

  1. The senses.
    Keep your wits about you.
  2. Intellectual ability; faculty of thinking, reasoning.
    Where she has gone to is beyond the wit of man to say.
  3. The ability to think quickly; mental cleverness, especially under short time constraints.
    My father had a quick wit and a steady hand.

verb

  1. To know, be aware of .
    You committed terrible actions — to wit, murder and theft — and should be punished accordingly.

preposition

  1. Pronunciation spelling of with.

Origin

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”).

From Wiktionary, via Kaikki.org (CC BY-SA)