whit

From Middle English wiȝt, wight, from Old English wiht (“wight, person, creature, being, whit, thing, something, anything”), from Proto-Germanic *wihtą (“thing, creature”) or *wihtiz (“essence, object”), from Proto-Indo-European *wekti- (“cause, sake, thing”), from *wekʷ- (“to say, tell”). Cognate with Old High German wiht (“creature, thing”), Dutch wicht, German Wicht. Doublet of wight.

• enPR: wĭt, hwĭt, IPA^(key): /wɪt/, /ʍɪt/
• Rhymes: -ɪt
• Homophone: wit (in accents with the wine-whine merger)

whit (plural whits)

1. The smallest part or particle imaginable; an iota.

   He worked tirelessly to collect and wind a ball of string eight feet around, and it matters not one whit.

   • 1602: William Shakespeare, Hamlet, act V scene 2

     Not a whit.

   • 1917, Incident by Countee Cullen

     Now I was eight and very small, \ And he was no whit bigger \ And so I smiled, but he poked out \ His tongue, and called me, 'Nigger.'

• (smallest part imaginable): bit, iota, jot, scrap
• See also Thesaurus:modicum.

• with, with-

• hwit, white, whyte, whitt, whytt, whyt, whiȝt, qwyght, ȝwijt, wyghte

Old English hwīt, from Proto-Germanic *hwītaz.

• IPA^(key): /ʍiːt/

whit (plural and weak singular white, comparative whitter, superlative whittest)

1. white, pale, light (in color)

   • a. 1382, John Wycliffe, “Apocalips 1:14”, in Wycliffe's Bible:

     And the heed of hym and his heeris weren whijt, as whijt wolle, and as snow; and the iȝen of hym as flawme of fier.

     And his head and his hairs were white, as white wool, and like snow, and his eyes were like fire's flame.

2. (referring to people) wearing white clothes
3. (referring to people) having white skin
4. attractive, fair, beautiful
5. bright, shining, brilliant
6. (referring to plants) having white flowers
7. (heraldry) silver, argent (tincture)
8. (alchemy) Inducing the transmutation of a substance into silver
9. (medicine) Unusually light; bearing the pallor of death

• snow whit

• English: white
• Scots: quhite, fyte, fite, whyte, white

• “whīt (adj.)” in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-03-30.

whit

1. white (colour)
2. white pigment
3. The white of an egg
4. The white of an eye
5. white fabric
6. white wine
7. dairy products
8. Other objects notable for being white

• English: white
• Scots: quhite, fyte, fite, whyte, white

• “whīt (n.)” in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-03-30.

whit

1. what