See also: hain't

English

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Pronunciation

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Etymology 1

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Verb

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haint (third-person singular simple present haints, present participle hainting, simple past and past participle hainted)

  1. (US, dialectal) Alternative form of haunt
    • 1988, Randy Russell, Janet Barnett, “Dead Dan's Shadow on the Wall”, in Mountain Ghost Stories and Curious Tales of Western North Carolina, page 5:
      Looking from juror to juror and seeking out the smug faces of the witnesses who'd testified against him, he repeated his threat. "Those who say I kilt anybody are liars," he proclaimed. "And each of you will be hainted every day for the rest of your life. Then the devil will have ye."
    • 2003, Winson Hudson, Derrick Bell, Constance Curry, Mississippi Harmony: Memoirs of a Freedom Fighter, page 17:
      After he killed him, Ed came back and he didn't have no head and he hainted [haunted] Ole Master until he died himself — getting in his way all the time — Ole Ed would be right there with him.
    • 2003, W. Bruce Wingo, There Grows a Crooked Tree[1], page 92:
      “I just don't think it happened that way,” he argued. “Otherwise, the ghost wouldn't still be hainting the tree.”

Noun

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haint (plural haints)

  1. (US, dialectal) A ghost; a supernatural being; Alternative form of haunt.
    • 1960 July 11, Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Philadelphia, Pa., New York, N.Y.: J[oshua] B[allinger] Lippincott Company, →OCLC, part 2, page 254:
      "Ain't you scared of haints?"
    • 1987, Toni Morrison, Beloved, page 18:
      I got a tree on my back and a haint in my house, and nothing in between but the daughter I am holding in my arms.
    • 2005, Eulie Rowan, “The Four-Legged Haint”, in The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs, Simon and Schuster, page 106:
      It didn't take long for word to spread that there was a "haint" in the graveyard. A haint is what the old-timers called a ghost.
    • 2009, Mary Monroe, God Still Don't Like Ugly[2], page 211:
      My dead grandpa's haint floated above my bed one night when I was a young'un and scared me so bad I busted the bedroom door down tryin' to get out that room so fast.
Derived terms
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Etymology 2

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Contraction

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haint

  1. (dialectal) Alternative form of ain't

Anagrams

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Cimbrian

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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From Middle High German *heinaht, from Old High German hīnaht (tonight), from (this, from Proto-Germanic *hiz) + naht (night). Cognate with obsolete German heint, heinacht (tonight), Bavarian heint (today).

Adverb

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haint

  1. (Sette Comuni) this evening

Derived terms

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References

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  • “haint” in Martalar, Umberto Martello, Bellotto, Alfonso (1974) Dizionario della lingua Cimbra dei Sette Communi vicentini, 1st edition, Roana, Italy: Instituto di Cultura Cimbra A. Dal Pozzo

Irish

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Noun

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haint f sg

  1. h-prothesized form of aint

Welsh

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Pronunciation

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Noun

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haint f (plural heintiau, not mutable)

  1. infection, disease
    Synonym: clefyd
  2. plague, pestilence
    Synonyms: pla, bad

Derived terms

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Further reading

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  • R. J. Thomas, G. A. Bevan, P. J. Donovan, A. Hawke et al., editors (1950–present), “haint”, in Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru Online (in Welsh), University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh & Celtic Studies