mist
pronunciation
How to pronounce mist in British English:
UK [mɪst]
How to pronounce mist in American English:
US [mɪst]
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- Noun:
- a thin fog with condensation near the ground
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- Verb:
- become covered with mist
- make less visible or unclear
- spray finely or cover with mist
Word Origin
- mist
- mist: [OE] Mist is a member of quite a widespread Indo-European family of ‘mist’-words. Dutch and Swedish share mist, and among the non- Germanic languages Greek has omíkhlē, Lithuanian and Latvia migla, Serbo-Croat màgla, Polish mgła, and Russian mgla, all meaning ‘mist’, besides Sanskrit mēghas ‘cloud’, which all point back to an Indo- European ancestor *migh-, *meigh-.
- mist (n.)
- Old English mist "dimness (of eyesight), mist" (earliest in compounds, such as misthleoðu "misty cliffs," wælmist "mist of death"), from Proto-Germanic *mikhstaz (cognates: Middle Low German mist, Dutch mist, Icelandic mistur, Norwegian and Swedish mist), perhaps from PIE *meigh- "to urinate" (cognates: Greek omikhle, Old Church Slavonic migla, Sanskrit mih, megha "cloud, mist;" see micturition).Sometimes distinguished from fog, either as being less opaque or as consisting of drops large enough to have a perceptible downward motion. [OED]Also in Old English in sense of "dimness of the eyes, either by illness or tears," and in figurative sense of "things that obscure mental vision."
- mist (v.)
- Old English mistian "to become misty, to be or grow misty;" see mist (n.). Meaning "To cover with mist" is early 15c. Related: Misted; misting.