wit

英文词源

wit

wit: Both the noun wit [OE] and the verb [OE] go back ultimately to the Indo-European base *woid-, *weid-, *wid-. This originally meant ‘see’, in which sense it has given English visible, vision, etc, but it developed metaphorically to ‘know’, and it is this sense that lies behind English wit. The noun to begin with denoted ‘mind, understanding, judgement, sense’ (a meaning preserved in expressions such as ‘keep one’s wits about one’ and ‘slow-witted’), and the modern sense ‘clever humorousness’ did not begin to emerge until the 16th century.

The verb has now virtually died out, except in the expression to wit. Witness is etymologically the state of ‘knowing’. Other English words that come from the same Indo-European base or its Germanic descendant include guide, history, idea, story, and twit.
=> guide, guise, history, idea, story, twit, vision, wise, witness

wit (n.)

"mental capacity," Old English wit, witt, more commonly gewit "understanding, intellect, sense; knowledge, consciousness, conscience," from Proto-Germanic *wit- (cognates: Old Saxon wit, Old Norse vit, Danish vid, Swedish vett, Old Frisian wit, Old High German wizzi "knowledge, understanding, intelligence, mind," German Witz "wit, witticism, joke," Gothic unwiti "ignorance"), from PIE *weid- "to see," metaphorically "to know" (see vision). Related to Old English witan "to know" (source of wit (v.)). Meaning "ability to connect ideas and express them in an amusing way" is first recorded 1540s; that of "person of wit or learning" is from late 15c. For nuances of usage, see humor.

A witty saying proves nothing. [Voltaire, Diner du Comte de Boulainvilliers]

---

Wit ought to be five or six degrees above the ideas that form the intelligence of an audience. [Stendhal, "Life of Henry Brulard"]

Witjar was old slang (18c.) for "head, skull." Witling (1690s) was "a pretender to wit."

wit (v.)

"to know" (archaic), Old English witan (past tense wast, past participle witen) "to know, beware of or conscious of, understand, observe, ascertain, learn," from Proto-Germanic *witan "to have seen," hence "to know" (cognates: Old Saxon witan, Old Norse vita, Old Frisian wita, Middle Dutch, Dutch weten, Old High German wizzan, German wissen, Gothic witan "to know"), from PIE *weid- (see wit (n.)). The phrase to wit, almost the only surviving use of the verb, is first recorded 1570s, from earlier that is to wit (mid-14c.), probably a loan-translation of Anglo-French cestasavoir, used to render Latin videlicet (see viz.).