This week's theme
Archaic words

This week's words
mickle
inwit
reechy
aby
mazard

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(IN-wit)

MEANING:

noun:
1. Conscience.
2. Reason, intellect.
3. Courage.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Old English inwit, from in + wit (mind, thought). Earliest documented use: 1230.

NOTES:

The word is usually seen as part of the phrase agenbite of inwit. Agenbite (remorse) is literally, again-bite, a variant of ayenbite, from ayen (again) + bite. James Joyce reanimated this ancient term back into the language when he used it in Ulysses.

USAGE:

"The Journals of Sylvia Plath may be intensely introspective, full of the agenbite of inwit, but they are just as intensely external, describing -- with an attentiveness one can't imagine in any male diarist -- food, furniture, hair, flowers, colours, and clothes."
Blake Morrison; Love at First Bite; Independent On Sunday (London, UK); Apr 2, 2000.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: