whit

plural whits

1. datedThe smallest part or particle imaginable; an iota.

   Star. I beleeue we muſt leaue the killing out, when all is done. Bot. Not a whit: I haue a deuice to make all well.

   c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “A Midsommer Nights Dreame”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene iii], page 151

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   Sadly behind the great age of rowdy self-advertisement in which their lot has fallen, they seem not to have advanced one whit beyond John the Baptist and the Apostles, 1800 years ago, in their notions of the way in which the metanoia, the change of mind of the ill-doer, is to be brought about.

   1890 December 9, Thomas H. Huxley, “Letter to the "Times" on the "Darkest England Scheme"”, in Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays

   But now another idea had obtruded itself, and was rapidly crowding his original intentions into the background. That American fortune was not to be sneezed at, nor was its possessor a whit less attractive.

   1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 109

   Now I was eight and very small, / And he was no whit bigger / And so I smiled, but he poked out / His tongue, and called me, 'Nigger.'

   1917, Countee Cullen, Incident

   In conclusion, I would remark that the great railway stations of London deserve to be visited every whit as much as St. Paul's Cathedral, the Abbey, or the Tower, and they are as worthy a memento of this century as those buildings are of the days that are gone.

   1944 July and August, “London Railway Stations in 1893”, in Railway Magazine, page 201, taken from The English Illustrated Magazine of June 1893

   Synonyms: bit, iota, jot, scrap, ace, atom, thought, atomy

1. pronunciation spellingPronunciation spelling of with.

plural Whits

1. Whitsunday.

   Holonyms: Pentecost, Whitsun, Whitsuntide, Whit (season)

   Synonyms: Pentecost, Whitsun

2. The season of Whitsuntide.

   Meronyms: Pentecost, Whitsun, Whit (day)

   Synonyms: Pentecost, Whitsun, Whitsuntide

1. archaichistoricalNewgate Prison in London, England (particularly as it was in the 15- and 1600s).

   One of the strong drinks brewed in the Whit, a place as noted for the variety of its potions as the irony of its expressions, was called 'South Sea'. The gin brewed in Newgate was […]

   2020 May 5, Peter Linebaugh, The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century, Verso Books, →ISBN

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   A Bow Street Runner says "I knew a cove as talked the way you do – leastways, in the way of business I knew him! In fact, you remind me of him very strong […] He was on the dub-lay, and very clever with his fambles. He ended up in the Whit, o’ course."

   1951, Georgette Heyer, The Quiet Gentleman