BENIGHT

benight, bedim

(verb) make darker and difficult to perceive by sight

benight

(verb) envelop with social, intellectual, or moral darkness; “The benighted peoples of this area”

benight

(verb) overtake with darkness or night

Source: WordNet® 3.1


Etymology

Verb

benight (third-person singular simple present benights, present participle benighting, simple past and past participle benighted) (archaic, transitive)

(chiefly, in passive) To overtake (a traveller etc) with the darkness of night, especially before shelter is reached.

To darken; to shroud or obscure.

To plunge or be overwhelmed in moral or intellectual darkness.

Source: Wiktionary


Be*night", v. t. [imp. & p. p. Benighted; p. pr. & vb. n. Benighting.]

1. To involve in darkness; to shroud with the shades of night; to obscure. [Archaic] The clouds benight the sky. Garth.

2. To overtake with night or darkness, especially before the end of a day's journey or task. Some virgin, sure, . . . benighted in these woods. Milton.

3. To involve in moral darkness, or ignorance; to debar from intellectual light. Shall we to men benighted The lamp of life deny Heber.

Source: Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary 1913 Edition



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Word of the Day

25 December 2024

UNAMBIGUOUS

(adjective) having or exhibiting a single clearly defined meaning; “As a horror, apartheid...is absolutely unambiguous”- Mario Vargas Llosa


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Coffee Trivia

The earliest credible evidence of coffee-drinking as the modern beverage appeared in modern-day Yemen. In the middle of the 15th century in Sufi shrines where coffee seeds were first roasted and brewed for drinking. The Yemenis procured the coffee beans from the Ethiopian Highlands.

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