Hight

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Called or named by a particular designation, especially in archaic or poetic usage
2. Known or referred to by a specific name or title, in the manner of older English speech
3. Designated or styled by a certain appellation, in the fashion of Middle English and earlier literature

Etymology: "Hight" is an archaic English verb meaning "to be called" or "to be named," as in the old phrase "a man hight Thomas." Its story is a tangle of sound changes and grammatical borrowing. The verb descends from Old English "hātan," meaning "to call" or "to name," and it survived into Middle English as "highten," a variant of "hoten." Dutch "heten" and German "heißen" are close relatives, carrying the same sense of naming. The surprising twist lies in the past tense. Old English had a separate simple past form, "hēht," and over time speakers reshaped the present stem to match it. The verb's own past tense thus became the model for the present, so the form we now know as "hight" is a sort of backward-formed echo of its past. The word is not related to "height," despite the similar spelling. "Height" is a later formation built from "high" and the suffix "-th," and the two only look alike by coincidence of spelling.

Synonyms: called, named