[https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34650/34650-h/34650-h.htm].

2. “In human life there is something like this often done; though, as I said, youth *wots not of it* and does not believe in it”. [emphasis added]. ~ (“The End of a Coil”, by Susan Warner). (1+2+8+14+17)

3. “‘She has tree brooches, and a necktie better than your best *one wots* you keeps to go seeing Susie Duffy in’, and Lizer giggled, slyly”. [emphasis added]. ~ (“My Brilliant Career”, by Miles Franklin).

4. “‘I promised you, madam, and *he wots it’*, said Cicely, with spirit”. [emphasis added]. ~ (“Unknown to History A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland”, by Charlotte M. Yonge).

6. *“He wots* how to drive a bargain”. [emphasis added]. ~ (“The Armourer’s Prentices by Charlotte Mary Yonge).

7. “That night sleeps Sigurd the Volsung, and awakes on the morrow-morn, | And *wots* at the first but dimly what thing in his life hath been born: | But the sun cometh up in the autumn, and the eve he remembered, | And the word he hath given to Gudrun to love her to the death; | And he longs for the Niblung maiden, that her love may cherish his heart, | Lest e’en as a Godhead banished he dwell in the world apart: | The new sun smiteth his body as he leaps from the golden bed, | And doeth on his raiment and is fair apparelled; | Then he goes his ways through the chambers, and greeteth none at all | Till he comes to the garth and the garden in the nook of the Niblung wall”. [emphasis added]. ~ (“The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs”, by William Morris).

8. “Trust me, sir, there is a far more hellish mischief brewing than any man *wots of”*. [emphasis added]. ~ (“Salute to Adventurers”, by John Buchan).

9. “I has a friend *wots* a h-uncle that’s ill: can you spare her, Bill, to attind him?” [emphasis added]. ~ (“Lucretia, Volume 6”, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton).

10. “Have you got a spare copy of that reg’lar bulletin that the Stage Kempany issoos every ten minutes to each passenger to tell ’em where we are, how far it is to the next place, and wots the state o’ the weather gin’rally?” ~ (“A Protegee of Jack Hamlin’s and Other Stories”, by Bret Harte).

11. “Many will meet us in the depths of the forest and go away thinking that we are just common plugs of whom the world *wots not;* but there is where they will fool themselves”. [emphasis added]. ~ (“Remarks”, by Bill Nye).

12. “Who now wots of the bones of Weland the wise, or which is the barrow that banks them?” ~ (“Anglo-Saxon Literature by John Earle).

13. “But Denewulf *wots not* of it”. [emphasis added]. ~ (“A Maid at King Alfred’s Court”, by Lucy Foster Madison).

14. “First, think on the poor; the full belly *wots not* what the hungry feels”. [emphasis added]. ~ (“Early English Meals and Manners”, by Various).

15. “There he finds the thumb-piece gone from the latch, to him a well-known sign that Mother Fitch has gone out a-nursing; so, pulling the hidden string *he wots of,* he lifts the latch within, and the door opens to his hand”. [emphasis added]. ~ (“A Set of Rogues”, by Frank Barrett).

16. “He *wots it,* doth he?” [emphasis added]. ~ (“Unknown to History A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland”, by Charlotte M. Yonge).

17. “What loss feels he that *wots not* what he loses?” [emphasis added]. ~ (William Broome; 1689-1745).

• woteth (third person singular): third person singular present of wit², to know. ~ (Webster’s 1913 Dictionary).

• wot: first and third persons singular indicative present of wit¹. ~ (Century Dictionary and Cyclopaedia).

6. the keen perception and apt expression of those connections between ideas which awaken pleasure and especially amusement; see the quotations and the synonyms; [e.g.]: “True wit consists in the resemblance of ideas. ... But every resemblance of ideas is not what we call wit, and it must be such an one that gives delight and surprise to the reader. Where the likeness is obvious, it creates no surprise, and is not wit. Thus, when a poet tells us that the bosom of his mistress is as white as snow, there is no wit in the comparison; but when he adds, with a sigh, it is as cold too, it then grows into wit”. (Joseph Addison: “Spectator”, №. 62); “Wit lying most in the assemblage of ideas, and putting those together with quickness and variety wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity, thereby to make up pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in the fancy”. (John Locke, “Human Understanding”, II. xi. 2); “In wit, if by wit be meant the power of perceiving analogies between things which appear to have nothing in common, he never had an equal”. (Thomas Macaulay, “An Essay of Francis Bacon”); 

7†. conceit; idea; thought; design; scheme; plan; [e.g.]: “To senden him into some far contree | There as this Jasoun may destroyed be; | This was his wit”. (Geoffrey Chaucer, “Good Women”, 1. 1420); “Was’t not a pretty wit of mine, master poet, to have had him rode into Puckeridge with a horn before him?” (Thomas Dekker and John Webster, “Northward Ho”, 1607, v. 1); 

at one’s wit’s end: see end; kind wit†: see kind¹; the five wits: the five senses; in general, the faculties of the mind; the five wits have been fancifully enumerated as common wit, imagination, fantasy, estimation, memory; [e.g.]: “The deadly synnes that been entred into thyn herte by thy five wittes”. (Geoffrey Chaucer, “Tale of Melibens”); “If thy wits run the wild-goose chase, I have done, for thou hast more of the wild-goose in one of thy wits than... I have in my whole five”. (Shakespeare, “Romeo and Julie”, ii. 4. 77, 78); “Alone and warming his five wits. | The white owl in the belfry sits”. (Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “The Owl”); 

to drive to one’s wit’s end: see drive; to have one’s wits in a creel: see creel; 

to live by one’s wits: to live by temporary shifts or expedients, as one without regular means of living; [e.g.]: “Joseph Addison sent to beg Gay, who was then living by his wits about town, to come to Holland House”. (Thomas Macaulay, “The Life and Writings of Addison”); (synonyms): 

in more recent use wit in the singular generally implies comic wit; in that sense it is different from humour; one principal difference is that wit always lies in some form of words, while humour may be expressed by manner, as a smile, a grimace, an attitude; underlying this is the fact, consistent with the original meaning of the words, that humour goes more deeply into the nature of the thought, while wit catches pleasing but occult or far-fetched resemblances between things really unlike: a good pun shows wit; Washington Irving’s “History of New York” is a piece of sustained humour, the humour lying in the portrayal of character, the nature of the incidents, etc.; again, “Wit may, I think, be regarded as a purely intellectual process, while humour is a sense of the ridiculous controlled by feeling, and coexistent often with the gentlest and deepest pathos” (Henry Reed, “Lectures on English Literature”, 1876, I. 357); hence humour is always kind, while wit may be unkind in the extreme; Jonathan Swift’s “Travels of Gulliver” is much too severe a satire to be called a work of humour; it is essential to the effect of wit that the form in which it is expressed should be brief; humour may be heightened in its effect by expansion into full forms of statement, description, etc. Wit more often than humour depends upon passing circumstances for its effect; [e.g.]: “The best and most agreeable specimen of English humour (it is humour in contrast to wit) which belongs to that period is Richard Steele’s invention, and Joseph Addison’s use, of the character of Sir Roger de Coverley. ... The same species of pure, genial, wise, and healthful humour has been sustained in the incomparable “Vicar of Wakefield”, and in the writings of our countryman Washington Irving”. (Henry Reed, “Lectures on English Literature”, xi. 369); “While wit is a purely intellectual thing, into every act of the humorous mind there is an influx of the moral nature; rays, direct or refracted, from the will and the affections, from the disposition and the temperament, enter into all humour; and thence it is that humour is of a diffusive quality, pervading an entire course of thought; while wit—because it has no existence apart from certain logical relations of thought which are definitely assignable, and can be counted even—is always punctually concentrated within the circle of a few words”. (Thomas De Quincey, “John Paul Frederick Richter”, 1821); “Dr. Trusler says that wit relates to the matter, humour to the manner; that our old comedies abounded with wit, and our old actors with humour; that humour always excites laughter but wit does not; that a fellow of humour will seta whole company in a roar, but that there is a smartness in wit which cuts while it pleases, wit, he adds, always implies sense and abilities, while humour does not; humour is chiefly relished by the vulgar, but education is requisite to comprehend wit”. (William Fleming, “Vocabulary of Philosophy”, 1857); “It is no uncommon thing to hear ‘He has humour rather than wit’. Here the expression commonly means pleasantry; for whoever has humour has wit, although it does not follow that whoever has wit has humour. 

Humour is wit appertaining to character, and indulges in breadth of drollery rather than in play and brilliancy of point. Wit vibrates and spurts; humour springs up exuberantly as from a fountain and runs on. In William Congreve (1670-1729, an English playwright remembered for his comedies) you wonder what he will say next. In Joseph Addison (1672-1719, an English essayist and poet who, with Richard Steele, 1672-1729, founded ‘The Spectator’, 1711-1714, and contributed most of its essays, including the ‘Sir Roger de Coverley Papers’) you repose on what is said, listening with assured expectation of something congenial and pertinent”. (Walter Savage Landor, 1775-1864, “Imaginary Conversations of the Greeks”, 1853); “Small room for Fancy’s many chorded lyre, | For Wit’s bright rockets with their trains of fire”. (Oliver Wendell Holmes, “An After-Dinner Poem”, 1793); “If you wish to know what humour is, I should say read ‘Don Quixote’... I am not speaking of the fun of the book, of which there is plenty, and sometimes boisterous enough, but of that deeper and more delicate quality, suggestive of remote analogies and essential incongruities, which alone deserves the name of humour”. (James Russell Lowell, 1819-1891, “Don Quixote”, page 129⁽*⁾). 

[from Middle English wit, wyt (plural wittes), from Anglo-Saxon wit, ‘knowledge’ = Old Saxon *wit in compound fire-wit, ‘curiosity’ = Old Friesian wit = Middle Low German wite, wete = Old High German wizzī, Middle High German witze, German witz, ‘knowledge’, ‘understanding’, ‘wisdom’, = Icelandic vit = Swedish vett = Danish vid, ‘wit’, ‘knowledge’; cf. Gothic un-wits, ‘without understanding’, ‘foolish’, un-witi, ‘ignorance’, ‘foolishness’; from the verb]. ~ (Century Dictionary and Cyclopaedia).

• wit² (n.): one who has discernment, reason, or judgment; a person of acute perception; especially, one who detects between associated ideas the finer resemblances or contrasts which give pleasure or enjoyment to the mind, and who gives expression to these for the entertainment of others; often, a person who has a keen perception of the incongruous or ludicrous, and uses it for the amusement and frequently at the expense of others;; [e.g.]: “By providing that choice wits after reasonable time spent in contemplation may at the length either enter into that holy vocation... or else give place and suffer others to succeed in their rooms”. (Richard Hooker, ”Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity”, v. 80); “O, sure I am, the wits of former days | To subjects worse have given admiring praise”. (Shakespeare, “Sonnets”, LIX); “When I die, | I’ll build an almshouse for decayed wits”. (Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, “Wit at Several Weapons”, Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher folios, v. 2); “If you examine the sayings of Charles Lamb, Sydney Smith, and other great wits, you will perceive that what amuses you is the sudden perception of some fine resemblance”. (James Freeman Clarke, “Self-Culture”, p. 145). [probably another use, and certainly now regarded as another use, of wit¹, verb; cf. spirit, ‘a person of lively mind or energy’, from spirit, ‘liveliness’, ‘energy’; witness, ‘a person who has knowledge’, from witness, ‘knowledge’; but wit as applied to a person may in part represent, as it may phonetically descend from, the Middle English *wit, wet, wite, weote, from Anglo-Saxon wita, weota, also gewita, ‘a man of knowledge’, ‘an adviser’, ‘counsellor’ = Old French wita, ‘a witness’ = Old High German wizzo, ‘a witness’; lit. ‘one who knows’, with formative a- (-an) of agent, from witan, ‘know’: see wit¹, verb; this Anglo-Saxon wita appears in the historical term witenagemot, Anglo-Saxon witena gemōt, ‘wits’ moot’, ‘moot of counsellors’, ‘a council’, ‘parliament’]. ~ (Century Dictionary and Cyclopaedia).