THE FIVE WITS

Definition: THE FIVE WITS

THE FIVE WITS

1. The five senses; also, sometimes, the five qualities or faculties, common wit, imagination, fantasy, estimation, and memory. --Chaucer. Nares. But my five wits nor my five senses can Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee. --Shak. Syn: Ingenuity; humor; satire; sarcasm; irony; burlesque. Usage: Wit , Humor . Wit primarily meant mind; and now denotes the power of seizing on some thought or occurrence, and, by a sudden turn, presenting it under aspects wholly new and unexpected -- apparently natural and admissible, if not perfectly just, and bearing on the subject, or the parties concerned, with a laughable keenness and force. ``What I want,'' said a pompous orator, aiming at his antagonist, ``is common sense.'' ``Exactly!'' was the whispered reply. The pleasure we find in wit arises from the ingenuity of the turn, the sudden surprise it brings, and the patness of its application to the case, in the new and ludicrous relations thus flashed upon the view. Humor is a quality more congenial to the English mind than wit. It consists primarily in taking up the peculiarities of a humorist (or eccentric person) and drawing them out, as Addison did those of Sir Roger de Coverley, so that we enjoy a hearty, good-natured laugh at his unconscious manifestation of whims and oddities. From this original sense the term has been widened to embrace other sources of kindly mirth of the same general character. In a well-known caricature of English reserve, an Oxford student is represented as standing on the brink of a river, greatly agitated at the sight of a drowning man before him, and crying out, ``O that I had been introduced to this gentleman, that I might save his life! The, ``Silent Woman'' of Ben Jonson is one of the most humorous productions, in the original sense of the term, which we have in our language.

Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

Anagrams: THE FIVE WITS

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams
	Words within the letters "e-e-f-h-i-i-s-t-t-v-w"
	-3 letters: heftiest, thewiest, viewiest, whitiest, wiftiest, withiest.
	-4 letters: festive, thieves, wettish, whitest, whities, withies.
	-5 letters: evites, fetish, fewest, swithe, swivet, thefts, theist, thieve, tithes, tweets, whites, withes.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro.