whitwhit

Whit comes from Old English wiht ‘wight, person, creature, being, whit, thing,…’, and goes back to Proto-Indo-European *wekʷ- ‘to say, tell’.

1. Proto-Indo-Europeanc. 4500–2500 BCE*wekʷ-¹‘to say, tell’reconstructed
2. Proto-Indo-Europeanc. 4500–2500 BCE*wekti-¹‘cause, sake, thing’reconstructed
3. Proto-Germanicc. 500 BCE–200 CE*wihtą¹‘thing, creature’reconstructed
4. Old Englishc. 450–1150wiht¹‘wight, person, creature, being, whit, thing, something, anything’
5. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500wiȝt¹
6. Englishearliest quotation c. 1595–1596whit¹

1. ¹ Wiktionary, English whit
2. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: c. 1595–1596, William Shakespeare, A Midsommer Nights Dreame: “Star. I beleeue we muſt leaue the killing out,…”.