One of my pet peeves is the modern usage of the word “wight” as a type of ghost or undead creature, because it’s purely fantasy guys misunderstanding Tolkien’s “barrow-wights” which just means “mound men” more or less. Wight is just the equivalent male term paired with “wyf” (wife, ie woman)
I long ago gave up on the fact that “nimrod” was of biblical origin and used to mean a mighty hunter. Bugs Bunny uses it sarcastically to describe Elmer Fudd once and it was never the same again.
Oh, that's even worse than what I thought it was. (Old English cognate to the Swedish "Vätte," which'd be more like goblin or gnome in modern English.)
Contextually, it's why the Isle of Wight is so-called. The Roman occupation absolute slaved the place until it was stripmined. Working men to death to extract tin and stone
This is completely tangential, but for the longest time I had a false memory that the barrow wight was in Bakshi’s version of LOTR. Which makes zero sense, because I KNEW Tom Bombadil was cut, and if he wasn’t there, who would have rescued Frodo and co?
