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A.Word.A.Day--wight

wight (wyt) noun

1. A living being.

2. A supernatural being.

[From Middle English, from Old English wiht.]

adjective

Strong and valiant, especially in war.

[From Middle English, from Old Norse vigt.]

"Was there any other thing in which I could procure myself to be ignominiously repulsed by this lean, penniless wight?"
Herman Melville; Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street, 1853.

"In this by place of nature there abode, in a remote period of American history, that is to say, some thirty years since, a worthy wight of the name of Ichabod Crane, who sojourned, or, as he expressed it, `tarried,' in Sleepy Hollow, for the purpose of instructing the children of the vicinity."
Washington Irving; The Legend of Sleepy Hollow; The Sketch Book; 1819/1820.

This week's theme: Anglo-Saxon words.

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