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# wist

«wist» in Mova's early modern english dictionary: **knew** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples.

### kind

archaic word

### modern equivalent

knew

### part of speech

verb, past tense of wit

### meaning for a pupil

Knew; had known. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/emode/W/wist/#m1)

### how it differs from today

No longer used; today we say "knew". The "wist-ful" in the first sentence is a different word meaning longing or sad.

### examples

- The wist-ful look in the poor man's face spoke plainer than words. (Fifty Famous Stories Retold) [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/emode/W/wist/#x1)
- ‘Little green toad whose leg doth twist, Go to the corner of which you wist, And bring to me the large old kist.’ (The Yellow Fairy Book) [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/emode/W/wist/#x2)

### tests

manual 5; corpora 2 (Torah 0, tales 2, Sefer Yetzirah 0); EWT 0; ratio 0.2 (Torah alone 0.0); Wiktionary archaic (first sense)

### Trees and pragmatics

[Every meaning and example of «wist» parsed by Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/emode/W/wist/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.