Whit
name, noun, prep ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 The smallest part or particle imaginable; an iota.
"Star. I beleeue we muſt leaue the killing out, when all is done. Bot. Not a whit: I haue a deuice to make all well."
- 2 Whitsunday.
"Holonyms: Pentecost, Whitsun, Whitsuntide, Whit (season)"
- 3 a tiny or scarcely detectable amount wordnet
- 4 The season of Whitsuntide.
"Meronyms: Pentecost, Whitsun, Whit (day)"
- 1 Pronunciation spelling of with. alt-of, pronunciation-spelling
- 1 Newgate Prison in London, England (particularly as it was in the 15- and 1600s). archaic, historical
"A Bow Street Runner says "I knew a cove as talked the way you do – leastways, in the way of business I knew him! In fact, you remind me of him very strong […] He was on the dub-lay, and very clever with his fambles. He ended up in the Whit, o’ course.""
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"And the officers of the children of Israel saw that they were in evil case, because it was said to them: There shall not a whit be diminished of the bricks for every day."
Etymology
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.
Shortening of the surname of Dick Whittington, London mayor who funded the rebuilding of the prison.
Related phrases
More for "whit"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.