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Wight: from Old English word wiht, is a Middle English word used to describe a creature
Creature

A creature is a living organism. The term is derived from a widespread historical belief in creationism. The word is generally used to refer to non-human Animal but does include humans, and it is also sometimes used to mean monster....
 or a living being. It is akin to Old High German wiht, meaning a creature
Creature

A creature is a living organism. The term is derived from a widespread historical belief in creationism. The word is generally used to refer to non-human Animal but does include humans, and it is also sometimes used to mean monster....
 or thing.

In its original usage the word wight described a living human being. More recently, the word has been used within the fantasy genre to describe undead or wraith-like creatures: corpses with a part of their decayed soul still in residence.






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Wight: from Old English word wiht, is a Middle English word used to describe a creature
Creature

A creature is a living organism. The term is derived from a widespread historical belief in creationism. The word is generally used to refer to non-human Animal but does include humans, and it is also sometimes used to mean monster....
 or a living being. It is akin to Old High German wiht, meaning a creature
Creature

A creature is a living organism. The term is derived from a widespread historical belief in creationism. The word is generally used to refer to non-human Animal but does include humans, and it is also sometimes used to mean monster....
 or thing.

In its original usage the word wight described a living human being. More recently, the word has been used within the fantasy genre to describe undead or wraith-like creatures: corpses with a part of their decayed soul still in residence. Notable examples of this include the undead
Undead

Undead is a collective name for fictional or legendary beings that are deceased yet behave as if alive. Undead may be incorporeal, such as ghosts, or Body, such as vampires and zombies....
 Barrow-Wights from the works of J. R. R. Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, Order of the British Empire was an English people English literature, poetry, Philology, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion....
 and the wights
Wight (Dungeons & Dragons)

A wight is an Undead creature in the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game....
 of Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons

Dungeons & Dragons is a fantasy role-playing game originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and first published in 1974 by TSR, Inc....
 role-playing game
Role-playing game

A role-playing game is a game in which the participants assume the roles of fictional characters. Participants determine the actions of their characters based on their characterization, and the actions succeed or fail according to a role-playing game system of rules and guidelines....
.

Modern German
German language

German is a West Germanic languages, thus related to and classified alongside English language and Dutch language. It is one of the world's world language and the most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union....
 "Wicht" is a cognate, meaning "small person, dwarf", and also "unpleasant person"; in Low German
Low German

Low German or Low Saxon is any of the regional language varieties of the West Germanic languages spoken mainly in northern Germany and the eastern part of the Netherlands....
 it means "girl". The word is a cognate
Cognate

Cognates in linguistics are words that have a common etymology origin.An example of cognates within the same language would be English shirt vs....
 with Dutch wicht, German Wicht, Old Norse vættir
Vættir

V?ttir or wights are nature spirits in the Norse mythology. These nature spirits divide up into 'families', including the ?lfar , Dvergar , J?tnar , and even gods, the ?sir and Vanir, who are understood to be prominent families among them....
 and Swedish vätte. It is not related to the English word "witch". The Wicht, Wichtel or Wichtelchen of Germanic folklore is most commonly translated into English as an imp
Imp

An imp is a mythology being similar to a fairy or demon, frequently described in folklore and superstition. The word may perhaps derive from the term ympe, used to denote a young grafting tree....
, a small, shy character who often does helpful domestic chores when nobody is looking (as in the Tale of the Cobbler's Shoes).

In literature and culture


Examples of the word used in classic English literature and poetry:

  • Geoffrey Chaucer
    Geoffrey Chaucer

    Geoffrey Chaucer was an English author, poet, philosopher, Bureaucracy, Noble court and diplomat. Although he wrote many works, he is best remembered for his unfinished frame narrative The Canterbury Tales....
     (1368-1372), The Book of the Duchess, line 579:
    "Worste of alle wightes."


  • Geoffrey Chaucer
    Geoffrey Chaucer

    Geoffrey Chaucer was an English author, poet, philosopher, Bureaucracy, Noble court and diplomat. Although he wrote many works, he is best remembered for his unfinished frame narrative The Canterbury Tales....
     (1368-1372), Prologue of The Knight, line 72-73:
    "In all his life, to whatsoever wight.
    He was a truly perfect, gentle knight."


  • Geoffrey Chaucer
    Geoffrey Chaucer

    Geoffrey Chaucer was an English author, poet, philosopher, Bureaucracy, Noble court and diplomat. Although he wrote many works, he is best remembered for his unfinished frame narrative The Canterbury Tales....
     (circa 1379-1380), The House of Fame, line 1830-1831:
    "We ben shrewes, every wight,
    And han delyt in wikkednes."


  • Edmund Spenser
    Edmund Spenser

    Edmund Spenser was an important England poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem celebrating, through fantastical allegory, the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I....
     (1590-1596), The Faerie Queene, I.i.6.8-9:
    "That every wight to shrowd it did constrain,
    And this fair couple eke to shroud themselues were fain."


  • William Shakespeare
    William Shakespeare

    William Shakespeare was an English people poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's preeminent dramatist....
     (circa 1602), The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act I, Sc. III:
    "O base Hungarian wight! wilt thou the spigot wield?


  • William Shakespeare
    William Shakespeare

    William Shakespeare was an English people poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's preeminent dramatist....
     (circa 1603), Othello, Act II, Sc. I:
    "She was a wight, if ever such wight were"


  • John Milton
    John Milton

    John Milton II was an English poet, author, polemicist and civil servant for the Commonwealth of England. He is best known for his Epic poetry Paradise Lost and for his treatise condemning censorship, Areopagitica....
     (1626), On the Death of a Fair Infant Dying of a Cough, verse vi:
    "Oh say me true if thou wert mortal wight..."


  • George R. R. Martin
    George R. R. Martin

    George Raymond Richard Martin , sometimes referred to as GRRM, is an United States author and screenwriter of fantasy fiction, horror fiction, and science fiction....
    , A Song of Ice and Fire
    A Song of Ice and Fire

    A Song of Ice and Fire is an award-winning series of epic fantasy novels by American novelist and screenwriter George R. R. Martin. Martin began writing the series in 1991 and the first volume was published in 1996....
     series, Book IV A Feast for Crows
    A Feast for Crows

    A Feast for Crows is the fourth of seven planned novels in A Song of Ice and Fire, an epic fantasy series by American author George R. R....
     (2005):
    "Who has been beyond the wall of death to see? Only the wights, and we know what they are like. We know."


See also

  • Wraith
    Wraith

    The word wraith is a Scottish dialectal word for "ghost, spectre, apparition". It came to be used in Scottish Romanticist literature, and acquired the more general or figurative sense of "portent, omen"....