wight

noun

1. (archaic)A living creature, especially a human being.

   “O bace gongarian wight, wilt thou the ſpicket willd?”

   “Oh ſay me true if thou wert mortal wight And why from us ſo quickly thou didſt take thy flight.”

   “But woe betide the wandering wight, / That treads its circle in the night.”

   “In this by-place of nature there abode, in a remote period of American history, that is to say, some thirty years since, a worthy wight of the name of Ichabod Crane, who sojourned, or, as he expressed it, "tarried," in Sleepy Hollow, for the purpose of instructing the children of the vicinity.”

   “Some gamesome wights will tell you that they have to plant weeds there, they don’t grow naturally; [...]”

2. (Germanic, Old-Norse)A supernatural being, often used in compounds such as the land-vættr which guard the land, especially the four guardians of Iceland.
3. (poetic)A ghost, deity or other supernatural entity.

   “But I saw a glow-worm near, / Who replied: ‘What wailing wight / Calls the watchman of the night?”

   ““In judging of that tempestuous wind called Euroclydon,” says an old writer—of whose works I possess the only copy extant—“it maketh a marvellous difference, whether thou lookest out at it from a glass window where the frost is all on the outside, or whether thou observest it from that sashless window, where the frost is on both sides, and of which the wight Death is the only glazier.””

   “Everything in their way was kicked out of place, the barrow-wight setting on with hideous eagerness; Grettir gave back before him for a long time, till at last it came to this, that he saw it would not do to hoard his strength any more; now neither spared the other, and they were brought to where the horse-bones were, and thereabout they wrestled long.”

4. A wraith-like creature.

adj

1. (archaic)Brave, valorous, strong.

   “I haue two sones that were but late made knyghtes / and the eldest hyghte sir Tirre /[…]/ and my yongest sone hyght Lauayne / and yf hit please yow / he shalle ryde with yow vnto that Iustes / and he is of his age x stronge and wyght”

2. (UK, dialectal, obsolete)Strong; stout; active.

   “Then spake Much the milner son, / Ever more well him betide! / ‘Take twelve of thy wight yeomen, / Well weapon’d by thy side. / Such one would thyselfë slon, / That twelve dare not abide.’”

   “Ye do you to my father's stable, / Where steeds do stand baith wight and able; / Strike ane o' them upo' the back, / The swiftest will gie his head a wap.”

name

1. The Isle of Wight.
2. A sea area comprising part of the English Channel, from the southern English coast down to Normandy.
3. A surname.