benight

present singular third person benights · participle present benighting · participle past benighted · past benighted · alternative benighten

1. archaictransitivechiefly passive voiceTo overtake (a traveller etc) with the darkness of night, especially before shelter is reached.

   The public road, however, was tolerably well-made and safe, so that the prospect of being benighted brought with it no real danger.

   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

   2 more examples

   How far might I have been on my way by this time! I am made to tread thoſe ſteps thrice over, which I needed not to have trod but once: Yea now alſo I am like to be benighted, for the day is almost ſpent.

   1678, John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World, to That which is to Come: […], London: […] Nath[aniel] Ponder […], →OCLC, page 47

   [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.

   1751, [Tobias] Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle […], volume (please specify |volume=I to IV), London: Harrison and Co., […], →OCLC

2. archaictransitiveTo darken; to shroud or obscure.

   The King with half the East at heel is marched from lands of morning; / Their fighters drink the rivers up, their shafts benight the air.

   1922 October, A[lfred] E[dward] Housman, “[Poem] XXV: The Oracles”, in Last Poems, London: Grant Richards Ltd., →OCLC, stanza 4, page 51, lines 13–14

3. archaictransitiveTo plunge or be overwhelmed in moral or intellectual darkness.

   Can we whose souls are lighted With Wisdom from on high, Can we to men benighted The lamp of life deny?

   1819, Reginald Heber, The Missionary Hymn