wite

• enPR: wīt, IPA^(key): /waɪt/
• Rhymes: -aɪt
• Homophone: wight; (in accents with the wine-whine merger) white

From Middle English wīten (“to accuse, reproach, punish, suspect”), Old English wītan (“to look, behold, see, guard, keep, impute or ascribe to, accuse, reproach, blame”), from Proto-Germanic *wītaną. Connected to Old English wīte, see below.

• wyte

wite (third-person singular simple present wites, present participle witing, simple past and past participle wited)

1. (chiefly Scotland) To blame; regard as guilty, fault, accuse
   • Late 14th century, Geoffrey Chaucer, ‘The Wife of Bath's Tale’, Canterbury Tales:

     As help me God, I shal þee nevere smyte! / Þat I have doon, it is þyself to wyte.

     ‘The Miller's Prologue’, Canterbury Tales:

     And therfore if that I mysspeke or seye, Wyte it the ale of Southwerk, I you preye.

2. To reproach, censure, mulct
3. To observe, keep, guard, preserve, protect

From Middle English wite (“guilt, blameworthiness, blame, wrongdoing, misdeed, offense, punishment, retribution, fine, bote, customary rent”), from Old English wīte (“punishment, pain, torment”), from Proto-Germanic *wītiją, from Proto-Indo-European *weyd- (“to see, find, behold”).

wite (plural wites)

1. (obsolete outside Scotland) Blame, responsibility, guilt.
   • 1485 July 31, Thomas Malory, “Capitulum XXVII”, in [Le Morte Darthur], book I, [London]: […] [by William Caxton], OCLC 71490786; republished as H[einrich] Oskar Sommer, editor, Le Morte Darthur […], London: Published by David Nutt, […], 1889, OCLC 890162034, page 027:

     :

     And so by fortune the ship drave unto a castle, and was all to-riven, and destroyed the most part […]. So many lords and barons of this realm were displeased, for their children were so lost, and many put the wite on Merlin more than on Arthur; so what for dread and for love, they held their peace.

     • 1485, Sir Thomas Malory, chapter xxiij, in Le Morte Darthur, book I:

     And so by fortune the shyp drofe vnto a castel and was al to ryuen and destroyed the most part […]/ So many lordes and barons of this reame were displeasyd / for her children were so lost / and many put the wyte on Merlyn more than on Arthur / so what for drede and for loue they helde their pees

   • 1922, E. R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros, The Project Gutenberg, Australia:

     Nor I will not suffer mine indignation so to witwanton with fair justice as persuade me to put the wite on Witchland.

2. Punishment, penalty, fine, bote, mulct.

From Middle English witen, from Old English wītan (“to see, accuse, go, depart”), from Proto-Germanic *wītaną, from Proto-Indo-European *weyd- (“to see, find, behold”).

wite (third-person singular simple present wites, present participle witing, simple past and past participle wited)

1. (obsolete or poetic) To go, go away, depart, perish, vanish

• Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

• ƿite

From Proto-Germanic *wītiją (“punishment”). Cognate with Old Frisian wīte, Old Saxon wīti, Dutch wijte, Old High German wīzi, Old Norse víti.

• IPA^(key): /ˈwiːte/

wīte n (nominative plural wītu)

1. punishment, torment, torture

   Hé ƿíte ƿealdeþ. — He is the disposer of punishment. (He wields punishment.)

2. plague, disease, evil, injury, pain

   Of ðam ƿíte gehǽled; — Healed of the disease.

3. penalty, fine, bote: contribution, in money or food, to sustenance of king or his officers
4. woe, misery, distress

• Latin: wīta

• IPA^(key): /ˈvʲi.tɛ/

wite

1. inflection of wity:
   1. neuter nominative singular
   2. neuter accusative singular
   3. neuter vocative singular
   4. nonvirile nominative plural
   5. nonvirile accusative plural
   6. nonvirile vocative plural

wite

1. Alternative form of wyte

wite

1. Alternative form of witte