benight - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
From Middle English benyghten, binighten, bynyȝten, equivalent to be- + night.
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /bɪˈnaɪt/
- (General American) IPA(key): /bɪˈnaɪt/, /bə-/
- Homophone: beknight
- Hyphenation: be‧night
- Rhymes: -aɪt
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.
1751, [Tobias] Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle […], volume (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.
- 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?
- OED 2nd edition 1989