benightとは 意味・読み方・使い方

語源

From Middle English benyghten, binighten, bynyȝten, equivalent to be- +‎ night.

発音

• 韻: -aɪt

動詞

benight (三人称単数 現在形 benights, 現在分詞 benighting, 過去形および過去分詞形 benighted) (archaic, transitive)

1. (chiefly in passive) To overtake (a traveller etc) with the darkness of night, especially before shelter is reached.
   • 1678, John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World, to That which is to Come: […], London: […] Nath[aniel] Ponder […], OCLC 228725984; reprinted in The Pilgrim’s Progress (The Noel Douglas Replicas), London: Noel Douglas, […], 1928, OCLC 5190338, page 47:

     How far might I have been on my way by this time! I am made to tread thoſe ſteps thrice over, which I needed not to have trod but once: Yea now alſo I am like to be benighted, for the day is almost ſpent.

   • 1751, [Tobias] Smollett, chapter 21, in The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle […], volume I, London: Harrison and Co., […], published 1781, OCLC 316121541:

     [H]e struck off the common road, to take the benefit of a nearer cut; and finding himself benighted near a village, took up his lodging at the first inn to which his horse directed him.

   • 1815 February 24, [Walter Scott], chapter I, in Guy Mannering; […], volume I, Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and Archibald Constable and Co., […], OCLC 742335644, page 4:

     The public road, however, was tolerably well-made and safe, so that the prospect of being benighted brought with it no real danger.

2. To darken; to shroud or obscure.
   • 1922 October, A[lfred] E[dward] Housman, “[Poem] XXV: The Oracles”, in Last Poems, London: Grant Richards Ltd., OCLC 31583861, stanza 4, lines 13–14, page 51:

     The King with half the East at heel is marched from lands of morning; / Their fighters drink the rivers up, their shafts benight the air.

3. To plunge or be overwhelmed in moral or intellectual darkness.
   • 1819, Reginald Heber, The Missionary Hymn:

     Can we whose souls are lighted

     With Wisdom from on high,

     Can we to men benighted

     The lamp of life deny?

派生語

• benighted
• benightedly
• benightedness
• benighter
• benighting
• benightment