benight
English edit
Alternative forms edit
Etymology edit
From Middle English benyghten, binighten, bynyȝten, equivalent to be- + night.
Pronunciation edit
- Rhymes: -aɪt
Verb edit
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.
- 1678, John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World, to That which is to Come: […], London: […] Nath[aniel] Ponder […], →OCLC; reprinted in The Pilgrim’s Progress (The Noel Douglas Replicas), London: Noel Douglas, […], 1928, →OCLC, page 47:
- How far might I have been on my way by this time! I am made to tread thoſe ſteps thrice over, which I needed not to have trod but once: Yea now alſo I am like to be benighted, for the day is almost ſpent.
- 1751, [Tobias] Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to IV), London: Harrison and Co., […], →OCLC:
- [H]e struck off the common road, to take the benefit of a nearer cut; and finding himself benighted near a village, took up his lodging at the first inn to which his horse directed him.
- 1815 February 24, [Walter Scott], chapter I, in Guy Mannering; or, The Astrologer. […], volume I, Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and Archibald Constable and Co., […], →OCLC, page 4:
- The public road, however, was tolerably well-made and safe, so that the prospect of being benighted brought with it no real danger.
- To darken; to shroud or obscure.
- 1922 October, A[lfred] E[dward] Housman, “[Poem] XXV: The Oracles”, in Last Poems, London: Grant Richards Ltd., →OCLC, stanza 4, page 51, lines 13–14:
- The King with half the East at heel is marched from lands of morning; / Their fighters drink the rivers up, their shafts benight the air.
- To plunge or be overwhelmed in moral or intellectual darkness.
- 1819, Reginald Heber, The Missionary Hymn[1]:
- Can we whose souls are lighted
With Wisdom from on high,
Can we to men benighted
The lamp of life deny?
Derived terms edit
Translations edit
to overtake with night; to be caught out by oncoming night before reaching one's destination
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to darken — see also darken
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
References edit
- OED 2nd edition 1989