dite

See also: ditë, díte, dítě, and dîte

English edit

Etymology 1 edit

Pronunciation edit

IPA^(key): /daɪt/
Audio (Southern England) (file)
Rhymes: -aɪt

Verb edit

dite (third-person singular simple present dites, present participle diting, simple past and past participle dited)

(obsolete, transitive) To prepare for use or action; to make ready.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto VIII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 18:
  His hideous club aloft he dites.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “dite”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

Etymology 2 edit

Variant of doit.^[1]

Pronunciation edit

IPA^(key): /daɪt/

Noun edit

dite (plural dites)

(US, Maine) A trifling quantity or amount.
A “dite” is a Maine measurement, somewhere between a smidge and a bit.
- 2019, John Gould, This Trifling Distinction: Reminiscences from Down East, Down East Books, →ISBN, page 95:
  Two carpenters were moving a small building onto a new foundation, and one of them says, “Shove it my way a dite!” The other shoved, but shoved a little too hard. “Nope — too much! I said a dite!”
- 1993, Ralph Moody, The Fields of Home, U of Nebraska Press, →ISBN, page 80:
  “Set your calipers a dite bigger’n the hole so’s they’ll fit good and snug.”