Wist

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David Myer
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Wist

Postby David Myer » Wed Jan 19, 2022 2:22 am

Past participle of Wit. To know.

But also, according to Wiktionary, a present tense. And interestingly, apparently a mis-construction in efforts to use archaisms! Love it.

This from Wiktionary:

Verb
wist (third-person singular simple present wists, present participle wisting, simple past and past participle wisted)

(nonstandard, pseudo-archaic) To know, be aware of.
Usage notes
This use of wist was never a part of the regular English language; rather, it resulted from the erroneous attempted use of archaisms.
Last edited by David Myer on Thu Jan 20, 2022 2:19 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Slava
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Re: Wist

Postby Slava » Wed Jan 19, 2022 7:00 am

I was thinking it was a misspelling of a card game.
Life is like playing chess with chessmen who each have thoughts and feelings and motives of their own.

bbeeton
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Re: Wist

Postby bbeeton » Wed Jan 19, 2022 11:05 am

And might this also be related to "wot"? (Archaic or Shakespearean.)

David Myer
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Re: Wist

Postby David Myer » Thu Jan 20, 2022 2:12 am

Interesting observation Barbara. I have done some more research and found this:
This meaning comes by linguistic legerdemain from a short poem, My Garden, written by the Manxman Thomas Brown in 1876 while he was a schoolmaster at Clifton College in Bristol. We remember now, if at all, only its first line, “A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot.” Thereby Brown was himself perpetrating godwottery by making use of an archaic verb.

The verb is wit, to know, one of the more irregular verbs in the language: wot is the present tense and wist the past. So God wot means “God knows”. The only survival of the verb is the formal to wit, meaning “that is to say”, introducing an explanation of something that has gone before.
The article is under 'Godwottery' in worldwidewords.org It certainly sounds authoritative, although it doesn't show how 'wit' is conjugated.

God wot = God knows. God wist = (presumably) God knew - although if He still exists, He probably still knows - unless He is old like me, and like Pooh Bear who responded to the question "Where is the North Pole? with "I think I used to know".

But where does 'wit' fit in this?
I am still not quite clear. It doesn't really accord with the Wiktionary comments I quoted earlier.

The quote in this response comes from here:https://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-god1.htm
under the term 'Godwottery'.

And as you can see, it suggests that 'to wit' means 'that is to say'. It might be written therefore "in order to know and understand, consider also this example or explanation". We can see here the connection between 'wit' and knowing.

This was touched on the other day by the Good Doctor in his explanation of 'witness'.

Audiendus
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Re: Wist

Postby Audiendus » Thu Jan 20, 2022 9:50 am

I have looked at Wiktionary and other sources, and it seems that the present tense of the verb wit is conjugated as follows (where I give alternatives, the sources are not in complete agreement):

I wit/wot
thou wost/wot/wottest
you (singular) wit
he/she/it wot
we wit
ye wit
you (plural) wit
they wit

(wit is sometimes spelled wite)

David Myer
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Re: Wist

Postby David Myer » Thu Jan 20, 2022 8:16 pm

Thanks Audiendus. Extraordinary! Do your sources also cover conjugation of the past tense?

Audiendus
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Re: Wist

Postby Audiendus » Thu Jan 20, 2022 10:23 pm

Do your sources also cover conjugation of the past tense?
Yes, that is wist all the way through (Wiktionary gives wistest as an alternative for the 'thou' form).

David Myer
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Re: Wist

Postby David Myer » Fri Jan 21, 2022 12:42 am

Thank you. I wot a lot more than I did yesterday.


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