whit

noun

1. The 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.”

   “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.”

   “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.”

   “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.'”

   “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.”

2. Whitsunday.

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

3. The season of Whitsuntide.

   “Meronyms: Pentecost, Whitsun, Whit (day)”

prep

1. (alt-of, pronunciation-spelling)Pronunciation spelling of with.

name

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

   “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."”

   “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 […]”