bight

English

Etymology

From Middle English bight, biȝt, byȝt (also bought, bowght, bouȝt; see bought), from Old English byht (“bend, angle, corner; bay, bight”), from Proto-West Germanic *buhti, from Proto-Germanic *buhtiz (“bend, curve”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰūgʰ- (“to bend”).

Cognate with Scots bicht (“bight”), Dutch bocht (“bend, curve”), Low German Bucht (“bend, bay”), German Bucht (“bay, bight”), Danish bugt (“bay”), Icelandic bugða (“curve”), Albanian butë (“soft, flabby”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /baɪt/

  • Audio (Southern England)

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• Rhymes: -aɪt
• Homophones: bite, by't, byte

Noun

bight (plural bights)

1. A corner, bend, or angle; a hollow

   the bight of a horse's knee

   the bight of an elbow

   • 1905, Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, page 166:

     I spied a bight of meadow some way below the roadway in an angle of the river.

2. An area of sea lying between two promontories, larger than a bay, wider than a gulf
3. (geography) A bend or curve in a coastline, river, or other geographical feature.
4. A curve in a rope
   • 1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, , →OCLC, part I:

     I could see every rib, the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his neck, and all were connected together with a chain whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking.

Related terms

• Bight of Benin
• Bight of Biafra
• German Bight
• Great Australian Bight
• New York Bight

Translations

Verb

bight (third-person singular simple present bights, present participle bighting, simple past and past participle bighted)

1. (transitive) To arrange or fasten (a rope) in bights.

See also

• Appendix:Parts of the knot