Wit

How to spell wit

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce wit

What does wit mean?

1. nounThe ability to express clever, amusing ideas or perceptions in a quick, original way.
2. nounPractical intelligence or sound mental capacity, often the power to think clearly under pressure.

Wit in a sentence

• Her dry wit made even the dullest meetings bearable.

• Living alone in the city for a year sharpened his wit.

• The speech was full of warmth and sharp wit.

• She had the wit to leave the building before the storm hit.

Where does wit come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Wit comes straight from the Old English noun witt, which meant the mind, the understanding, or the faculty of knowing, rather than anything funny. That noun grew from the same Germanic root as the old verb witan, meaning 'to know', and behind both lies the ancient Indo-European root weid-, meaning 'to see' and therefore 'to know', since knowing was imagined as having seen. That deep root is astonishingly productive: it also gives Latin videre 'to see', the Greek source of 'idea', and the Sanskrit veda 'knowledge'. For centuries wit simply meant intelligence or good sense, which survives in phrases like 'keep your wits about you', and only from around the sixteenth century did it narrow toward the modern meaning of clever, amusing verbal invention. The spelling is mercifully short and phonetic, so the main thing to remember is the single t.

How the word is built

• wit (from Old English witt: mind, understanding); a single unanalysable root with no prefix or suffix

Words that sound like wit

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• whit: The smallest possible amount or particle of something, used especially in negative statements.