agenbite
English edit
Alternative forms edit
Etymology edit
Learned borrowing from Middle English ayenbite, reflecting Old English agēn (“again, eft, back”).
Pronunciation edit
Noun edit
agenbite (uncountable)
- (often purposely archaic) remorse, ayenbite
- 1922 February, James Joyce, Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […], →OCLC:
- Speaking to me. They wash and tub and scrub. Agenbite of inwit. Conscience.
- 1998, Marshall McLuhan, The Agenbite of Outwit:
- A special property of all social extensions of the body is that they return to plague the inventors in a kind of agenbite of outwit.'
- 2008, David Koffler, How Jewy Should We Want Our Presidents To Be?:
- But more to the point here, the agenbite is, if not a Jewish condition, then more pervasive among Jews than any other group, by a wide margin.
- 2005, James Rother, A Review of An Lauterbach:
- […] habitude of writers challenged by the affliction of an over-agenbite and inwit to match.