Wight facts for kids

A wight (pronounced "wite") is a creature often found in fantasy stories and folklore. Sometimes, it's a living being, but very often, it's an undead creature, like a ghost or a zombie.

The word "wight" originally meant a living person in old English. Over time, especially in fantasy books and games, it started to describe special, often immortal or undead, beings. For example, in old Norse stories, a "haugbui" was a creature that guarded a burial mound. When these stories were translated into English, "haugbui" was sometimes called a "barrow-wight".

You might have heard of wights in popular fantasy worlds! They appear in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, where they are scary, undead guardians. They also show up in George R. R. Martin's book series A Song of Ice and Fire and the TV show Game of Thrones, often as frozen, undead soldiers. Since 1974, wights have been a common type of undead monster in the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) and other fantasy games like Vampire: The Masquerade and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

Wights in Old English Stories

The word "wight" was used a lot in classic English literature, but it usually just meant "person" or "creature." It didn't always mean a scary, undead monster like it does in modern fantasy. Here are a few famous writers who used the word:

• Geoffrey Chaucer (who wrote The Canterbury Tales around the late 1300s) used "wight" to mean a person. For example, he wrote about a "sweet wight" or a "worthy wight."
• Edmund Spenser used it in his epic poem The Faerie Queene (late 1500s) to refer to people.
• William Shakespeare also used "wight" in his plays, like The Merry Wives of Windsor and Othello, to mean a person, sometimes in a slightly negative or old-fashioned way.
• Later poets like William Wordsworth and John Keats (early 1800s) continued to use "wight" to describe a person or a being, sometimes with a feeling of pity or sadness, like a "wretched wight."
• Washington Irving used it in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820) to describe the main character, Ichabod Crane, as a "worthy wight."

The German Word Wicht

The German word Wicht is similar to the English "wight." It also means a living person, usually someone small, poor, or unhappy. It's a bit old-fashioned now, but people still understand it.

A smaller version of the word, Wichtel, refers to small, helpful creatures in German folklore and fantasy. These Wichtel are often like little gnomes or elves who live near people and secretly help them with tasks. They are similar to the Heinzelmännchen (little house gnomes). The word Wichtel has been used since the Middle Ages and is more common today than Wicht.

The Dutch Word Wicht

In Dutch, the word wicht can be used to describe a woman, sometimes with a negative feeling. It's not used for men.

However, the word Booswicht (which literally means "Evil-Being") is used to describe a villain, and it can refer to both men and women.

See also

• Jiangshi
• Vættir