benight

• benighten

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

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /bɪˈnaɪt/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /bɪˈnaɪt/, /bə-/
• Homophone: beknight
• Hyphenation: be‧night
• Rhymes: -aɪt

benight (third-person singular simple present benights, present participle benighting, simple past and past participle 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, 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, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle […], volume (please specify |volume=I to IV), London: Harrison and Co., […], →OCLC:

     [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; or, The Astrologer. […], volume I, Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and Archibald Constable and Co., […], →OCLC, 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, stanza 4, page 51, lines 13–14:

     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^[1]:

     Can we whose souls are lighted
     With Wisdom from on high,
     Can we to men benighted
     The lamp of life deny?

• John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner, editors (1989), “benight”, in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, →ISBN.