Word Finder - wit

definition

(now usually in the plural) Sanity.

example

He's gone completely out of his wits.

definition

(obsolete usually in the plural) The senses.

definition

Intellectual ability; faculty of thinking, reasoning.

example

Where she has gone to is beyond the wit of man to say.

definition

The ability to think quickly; mental cleverness, especially under short time constraints.

example

My father had a quick wit and a steady hand.

definition

Intelligence; common sense.

example

The opportunity was right in front of you, and you didn't even have the wit to take it!

definition

Humour, especially when clever or quick.

example

The best man's speech was hilarious, full of wit and charm.

definition

A person who tells funny anecdotes or jokes; someone witty.

example

Your friend is quite a wit, isn't he?

He had an ironic wit.

His face was pale and clammy, his wit sharp but his eyes glazed.

Darian had a quick wit that was as unpredictable as his actions.

His poems, novels and comedies are full of wit and exuberant vitality.

His wit was often used as a weapon of defence, for he did not suffer fools gladly.

She is especially known for her wit and humor.

But, since those universals, so far as they are called genera and species, cannot be perceived by any one in their purity without the admixture of imagination, Plato maintained that they existed and could be beheld beyond the things of sense, to wit, in the divine mind.

Half-witted men from the almshouse and elsewhere came to see me; but I endeavored to make them exercise all the wit they had, and make their confessions to me; in such cases making wit the theme of our conversation; and so was compensated.

Their sudden bouts of wit can make them seem rather capricious, but this only adds dimension to their personalities.

It needs your wit, your charm, and most of all, unique information about you.

Her knowledge of life, her sparkling wit and her almost faultless style, make these short stories masterpieces of their kind.

Even so, there's no denying Gemini's alert gaze and sharp wit.

Wit continued decrease of altitude south-eastward, the crystalline belt dips under the coastal plain, near a line marked by the Delaware river from Trenton to Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, and thence south-south-westward through Maryland and Virginia past the cities of Baltimore, Washington and Richmond.

It was one of his most trenchant utterances, full of fancy, wit, eloquence and elevated thought.

It was a desultory exposition of the Ruskinian ideal of life, manners and society, full of wit, play, invective and sermons on things in general.

More was not only a lawyer, a wit, a scholar, and a man of wide general reading; he was also a man of cultivated taste, who delighted in music and painting.

Bridgett (Wisdom and Wit of Blessed Thomas More, London, 1891).

She arrived nevertheless in safety at Leith, escorted by three of her uncles of the house of Lorraine, and bringing in her train her future biographer, Brantome, and Chastelard, the first of all her voluntary victims. On the 21st of August she first met the only man able to withstand her; and their first passage of arms left, as he has recorded, upon the mind of John Knox an ineffaceable impression of her "proud mind, crafty wit and indurate heart against God and His truth."

Early in 1751 he became literary critic to the Vossische Zeitung, and in this position laid the foundation for his reputation as a reviewer of learning, judgment and wit.

Here he manifested those great gifts which ultimately raised him to high office; a powerful grasp of mental, moral and political problems, combined with eloquence of a high order, and illuminated with brilliant flashes of wit.

Kingsley's life was written by his widow in 1877, entitled Charles Kingsley, his Letters and Memories of his Life, and presents a very touching and beautiful picture of her husband, but perhaps hardly does justice to his humour, his wit, his overflowing vitality and boyish fun.

He thought only of Ireland; lived for no other object; dedicated to her his beautiful fancy, his elegant wit, his manly courage, and all the splendour of his astonishing eloquence."

Finally he would consider, in a crowning treatise De cive, how men, being naturally rivals or foes, were moved to enter into the better relation of Society, and demonstrate how this grand product of human wit must be regulated if men were not to fall back into brutishness and misery.

He had, besides, a relish for Hobbes's wit (as he used to say, " Here comes the bear to be baited "), and did not like the old man the less because his presence at court scandalized the bishops or the prim virtue of Chancellor Hyde.

Chesterfield had long been celebrated for the politeness of his manners, the brilliancy of his wit, and the delicacy of his taste.

He had strong sense, quick discernment, wit, humour, immense knowledge of literature and of life, and an infinite store of curious anecdotes.

They have a remarkable quickness of apprehension, a ready wit, a retentive memory, combined, however, with religious pride and hypocrisy, and a disregard for the truth.

His original verse tends chiefly to show that with all his sarcastic and cynical wit his genius had also its tender, serious and sentimental side.

Nor in any series of comedies in existence is decency so rarely sacrificed to a desire for popularity or a false sense of wit.

His wit, however, was often cruel, and any one who responded with too much spirit was soon made to feel that the licence of talk was to be complete only on one side.

By eloquence, readiness of wit, and adroit flattery of the jury he contrived to secure his acquittal in the face of the open hostility of the judge - a unique achievement at a time when the condemnation of prisoners whom the authorities wished to convict was a mere matter of course.

After her father's death in 1819 she lived with her mother, and her wit and beauty attracted many admirers.

These elements are, briefly stated, (1) a strong partiality for subjects dealing with humble life, in country and town, with the fun of taverns and village greens, with that domestic life in the rough which goes to the making of the earlier farces in English and French; (2) a whimsical, elfin kind of wit, delighting in extravagance and topsy-turviness; (3) a frank interest in the pleasures of good company and good drink.

He professed to rest all upon Scripture, yet accepted from the Babylon of Rome a baptism neither scriptural nor primitive, nor fulfilling the chief conditions of admission into a visible brotherhood of saints, to wit, repentance, faith, spiritual illumination and free surrender of self to Christ.

After attending the grammar schools of Melton and Oakham, he entered St John's College, Cambridge, and while still an undergraduate he addressed in February 1712, under the pseudonym of Peter de Quir, a letter to the Spectator displaying no small wit and humour.

This was due to the king's relations with the Spanish dancer Lola Montez, who appeared in Munich in October 1846, and soon succeeded by her beauty and wit in fascinating the king, who was always susceptible to feminine charms. The political importance of this lay in the fact that the royal mistress began to use her great influence against the clerical policy of the Abel ministry.

Though it is a biographical tradition that he lacked wit, Moliere and Don Quixote seem to have been his favourites; and though the utilitarian wholly crowds romanticism out of his writings, he had enough of that quality in youth to prepare to learn Gaelic in order to translate Ossian, and sent to Macpherson for the originals !

Howe's eloquence, and still more his unfailing wit and high spirits, made him for many years the idol of his province.

Lowell was already looked upon by his companions as a man marked by wit and poetic sentiment; Miss White was admired for her beauty, her character and her intellectual gifts, and the two became thus the hero and heroine among a group of ardent young men and women.

Even his index was spiced with wit.

His morals were as loose as those of his great rival Mirabeau, but he was famed in Paris for his wit and gaiety.

His life was often in danger, but his ready wit always saved it, and it was said that one bon mot would preserve him for a month.

It must be remembered, however, that he was the great wit of the period.

The book did not attract the attention of the critics and the reading public till a letter from Emerson to the poet, in which the volume was characterized as "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed," was published in the New York Tribune.

But sometimes there is a contest between the new tests wit fsh cult and the old.

He never learned to read or write, though late in life he mastered colloquial Arabic; yet those Europeans who were brought into contact with him praised alike the dignity and charm of his address, his ready wit, and the astonishing perspicacity which enabled him to read the motives of men and of governments and to deal effectively with each situation as it arose.

On Arcona in Wit tow are the remains of an ancient fortress, enclosing a temple which was destroyed in 1168 by the Danish king Waldemar I., when he made himself master of the island.

This is in agreement wit the known results for n=a, n= i.

He himself delivered in the House of Commons many speeches unrivalled in parliamentary history for wit and recklessness; and one of them still lives in history as the "champagne speech."

The universal tribute of Townshend's colleagues allows him the possession of boundless wit and ready eloquence, set off by perfect melody of intonation, but marred by an unexampled lack of judgment and discretion.