''blight'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260915190735-00-⌔

blight - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

blight (countable and uncountable, plural blights)

• (phytopathology)
  • A diseased condition suffered by a plant; specifically, a complete and rapid chlorosis, browning, then death of plant tissues such as floral organs, leaves, branches, or twigs, especially one caused by a fungus; a mildew, a rust, a smut.
    • ✤ Proceed, inhuman Parent in thy Scorn;/Root up my Trees, vvith Blites deſtroy my Corn;/My Vineyards Ruin, and my Sheepfolds burn.¹
    • ✤ As ſudden blights corrupt the ripen’d grain,/And of its verdure ſpoil the mournful plain;/So hapleſs love on blooming features preys,/So hapleſs love deſtroys our peaceful days.²
    • ✤ Some there are vvho imagine the moſt deſtructive Blights vvhich attend Fruit-Trees, are produc’d by ſmall Shovvers of Rain, or vvhite Hoar-Froſts falling upon the Bloſſoms of Fruit-trees, vvhich being ſucceeded by cold North or Eaſterly VVinds, or froſty Mornings, are the Occaſion of the frequent Blights vvhich happen in the Spring Seaſon: […]³
    • ✤ A blight in 1855–56 set back the industry, many plantations being ruined and then given over to sugar cane. After the blight had disappeared, the plantations were re-established, and prosperity continued for years.⁴
  • The cause of such a condition, often unseen but believed to be airborne; specifically, a bacterium, a virus, or (especially) a fungus; also, an aphid which attacks fruit trees.
• (by extension)
  • A state of cloudy, humid weather.
    • ✤ And the youth stood by thy side and whispered to thee; and from his lips there came a reeking smoke, and in that smoke as in a blight the wings withered up.⁵
  • (pathology, dated) A diseased condition of the face or skin; specifically, bleeding under the conjunctiva of the eye, a form of skin rash, or a palsy of the face due to cold.
• (figurative)
  • Something that impedes development or growth, or spoils any other aspect of life.
    • ✤ Synonym: bane
    • ✤ But a blight had come over my existence, and I only visited these people for the sake of the information they might give me on the subject in which my interest was so terribly profound.⁶
    • ✤ He saw her image in the blight and blackness all around him, not irradiating but deepening the gloom.⁷
    • ✤ She moved about the country like a ghost, gathering herbs in dark loanings, lingering in kirkyairds, and casting a blight on innocent bairns.⁸
  • (specifically) A rundown and unsightly condition of an urban area; also, such an area.

Verb

blight (third-person singular simple present blights, present participle blighting, simple past and past participle blighted)

• (transitive)
  • (phytopathology) To affect the fertility or growth of (a plant) with a blight (noun sense 1.1), especially one caused by a fungus; to blast, to mildew, to smut.
    • ✤ Synonym: blighten
    • ✤ But if it happens, as ſometimes it does, that this Vapour bears up along vvith it any noxious mineral Steams, it then blasts Vegetables, eſpecially thoſe vvhich are more young and tender: blights Corn and Fruits: and is ſometimes injurious even to Men vvho chance to be then abroad in the Fields.⁹
    • ✤ In your eye there is death,/There is frost on your breath/Which would blight the plants.¹⁰
    • ✤ Oh, Love! like the blast of the desert thou blightest/The fairest of flowers with thy venomous breath.¹¹
    • ✤ Much is permitted to the power of spirits, so that, being unseen and unperceived, they appear rather in their effects than in their acts: as when some lurking evil in the air blighteth the fruit or grain in the blossom, killeth it in the blade, woundeth it in its full growth, and when the atmosphere tainted in some secret way poureth over the earth its pestilential vapours.¹²
  • (by extension, pathology, dated) To affect (a body part) with a disease.
    • ✤ [B] lighted be the tongue/That names thy name without the honour due!¹³
  • (figurative) To impede the development or growth of (an aspect of life); to damage, to ruin, to spoil.
    • ✤ Synonyms: see Thesaurus: spoil
    • ✤ Synonym: blighten
    • ✤ Those obscene tattoos are going to blight your job prospects.
    • ✤ [T]o be too far in loue vvith vvorldly felicity, that ſo blighteth goodneſſe and pietie, vvhat is it but vvith the Thurij to make an idoll of the vvinde, and to be in loue vvith blaſting.¹⁴
    • ✤ The lady Blast, you must understand, has such a particular malignity in her whisper, that it blights like an easterly wind, and withers every reputation that it breathes upon.¹⁵
    • ✤ Slavery, in all thy forms—mental and bodily—we detest thee! like the Upas-tree, thou blightest every thing within they poisonous influence; like the simoom, thou blastest all, wherever thy pestiferous breath reaches.¹⁶
    • ✤ Even he, cold and indifferent as he is, shall repent! I shall blight his hopes, as he has blighted mine.¹⁷
    • ✤ Then should we see depravity, impiety, drunkenness, theft, murder, and a long train of nameless sins against the natural affections and repulsions of mankind, overhanging the devoted spots, and creeping on, to blight the innocent and spread contagion among the pure.¹⁸
    • ✤ Bitter tears came now at the delusion which had blighted her young years: […]¹⁹
    • ✤ I need hardly explain to you that if you persist in this refusal you and I cannot continue to live together as man and wife. All my hopes and prospects in life will be blighted by such a separation.²⁰
    • ✤ And thus she would see him when she looked out upon the glad morning, and oh! would she drop one little tear upon his poor, lifeless form, would she heave one little sigh to see a bright young life so rudely blighted, so untimely cut down?²¹
    • ✤ Among the poorest of China’s provinces and autonomous regions, Gansu has largely been spared the overdevelopment that blights the country’s richer districts.²²
    • ✤ Before the Internet it was television. And, if not that, it was radio, films, or games. All have taken their turn as the popular bogeyman, blighting the minds of the young.²³
• (intransitive) Of a plant: to suffer blight (noun sense 1.1).
  • ✤ This vine never blights.

Etymology

🖼️ ➺

The etymology of the noun is uncertain; suggested derivations include the following:

• possibly related to Middle English blichening (“mildew or rust on grain, blight”),²⁴²⁵ possibly related to Middle English bliken (“to gleam, shine; to turn pale”),²⁶ from Old English blīcan (“to shine, sparkle”) (whence modern English blike (“(obsolete) to gleam, shine”); also compare Old Norse blikna (“to grow pallid”)), from Proto-West Germanic ﹡blīkan (“to shine”), from Proto-Germanic ﹡blīkaną (“to gleam, shine”), from Proto-Indo-European ﹡bʰleyǵ- (“to shine”); or
• since sense 2.2 refers to a diseased condition of the skin, possibly from Middle English ﹡bleighte, ﹡bleȝte, from Old English blǣcþa (“leprosy”) (related to blǣċe (“an itching skin-disease”) and blǣċo (“leprosy; paleness”)),²⁷ from Proto-West Germanic ﹡blaik, ultimately from Proto-Germanic ﹡blaikaz (“pale; white”), from Proto-Indo-European ﹡bʰleyǵ- (“to shine”). If so, the word is a doublet of bleak.

The verb is derived from the noun.²⁸

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) enPR: blīt, IPA: /blaɪt/
• Audio (Southern England): 🔊
• Audio (General American): 🔊
• Rhymes: -aɪt
• Homophone: blite

Printed 2026-09-15.

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Footnotes

1. 1697, Virgil, “The Fourth Book of the Georgics”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, page 136, lines 467–469: ↩

2. 1720, John Gay, “[Miscellanies.] Panthea. An Elegy.”, in Poems on Several Occasions, volume II, London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], and Bernard Lintot, […], →OCLC, page 388, lines 337–340: ↩

3. 1733, Philip Miller, “BLIGHTS”, in The Gardeners Dictionary: […], 2nd edition, volume I, London: […] C[harles] Rivington, […], →OCLC, column 1: ↩

4. 1922, William H[arrison] Ukers, “Cultivation of the Coffee Plant”, in All About Coffee, New York, N.Y.: The Tea and Coffee Trade Journal Company, →OCLC, page 241, column 1: ↩

5. 1848, [Edward Bulwer-Lytton], chapter IV, in Harold, the Last of the Saxon Kings; […], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, book VIII (Fate), page 261: ↩

6. 1816 June – 1817 April/May (date written), [Mary Shelley], chapter II, in Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. […], volume III, London: […] [Macdonald and Son] for Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, published 1 January 1818, →OCLC, page 22: ↩

7. 1846 October 1 – 1848 April 1, Charles Dickens, “Mr. Dombey Goes Upon a Journey”, in Dombey and Son, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1848, →OCLC, page 201: ↩

8. 1902 January, John Buchan, “The Outgoing of the Tide”, in The Watcher by the Threshold, and Other Tales, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, published 1902, →OCLC, page 231: ↩

9. 1695, John Woodward, “Part IV. Of the Origin and Formation of Metalls and Minerals.”, in An Essay toward a Natural History of the Earth: And Terrestrial Bodies, Especially Minerals: […], London: […] Ric[hard] Wilkin […], →OCLC, pages 212–213: ↩

10. 1830 June, Alfred Tennyson, “The Poet’s Mind”, in Poems. […], volume I, London: Edward Moxon, […], published 1842, →OCLC, page 51: ↩

11. 1840 August, “The Talisman”, in The Citizen; a Monthly Journal of Politics, Literature, and Art, volume II, number X, Dublin: Machen and Company, […]; London: Simpkin and Marshall, and Richard Groombridge, →OCLC, stanza IV, page 157: ↩

12. 1842, Tertullian, “The Book of Apology against the Heathen”, in C[harles] Dodgson, transl., edited by E[dward] B[ouverie] P[usey], Tertullian (A Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church, […]; 10), volume I (Apologetic and Practical Treatises), Oxford, Oxfordshire: John Henry Parker; London: J. G. F. and J. Rivington, →OCLC, pages 54–55: ↩

13. 1811, Walter Scott, The Vision of Don Roderick; a Poem, Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for John Ballantyne and Co. […]; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, →OCLC, stanza LI, page 47: ↩

14. 1623, Iames Rowlandson [i.e., James Rowlandson], “The Second Sermon”, in Gods Blessing in Blasting, and His Mercy in Mildew. Two Sermons Sutable to These Times of Death, London: […] Iohn Haviland for William Bladen, […], →OCLC, page 44: ↩

15. 1712 August 25 (Gregorian calendar), [Joseph Addison], “THURSDAY, August 14, 1712”, in The Spectator, number 457; republished in Alexander Chalmers, editor, The Spectator; a New Edition, […], volume V, New York, N.Y.: D[aniel] Appleton & Company, 1853, →OCLC, page 255: ↩

16. 1840 June, “[Reviews of New Books, &c.] Art. III.— A History of Slavery and Its Abolition. By Esther Copley (a New Edit.) pp. 648. Houlston & Stoneman, Paternoster Row.”, in Robert Montgomery Martin, editor, The Colonial Magazine and Commercial-Maritime Journal, volume II, number 6, London; Liverpool: Fisher, Son, & Co., page 236: ↩

17. 1841, Catherine Sinclair, chapter IV, in Modern Flirtations; or, A Month at Harrowgate. […], volume III, Edinburgh: William Whyte and Co., […], →OCLC, page 78: ↩

18. 1846 October 1 – 1848 April 1, Charles Dickens, “The Thunderbolt”, in Dombey and Son, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1848, →OCLC, page 459: ↩

19. 1862 July – 1863 August, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], “Ariadne Discrowns Herself”, in Romola. […], volume II, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], published 1863, →OCLC, book II, page 194: ↩

20. 1869 May, Anthony Trollope, “Lady Milborough as Ambassador”, in He Knew He Was Right, volume I, London: Strahan and Company, […], →OCLC, page 81: ↩

21. 1876, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter III, in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Hartford, Conn.: The American Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 40: ↩

22. 2020 May 11, Anna Sherman, “A Poetic Journey through Western China: Chapter 2: China: Xi’an to Turpan”, in T: The New York Times Style Magazine ‎${}^{[1]}$, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →OCLC, archived from the original on 7 November 2023: ↩

23. 2013, Frances Booth, The Distraction Trap: How to Focus in a Digital World ‎${}^{[2]}$, Harlow, Essex: Pearson, →ISBN: ↩

24. “blī̆chening, ger.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007. ↩

25. “blight, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, July 2023; “blight, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022. ↩

26. “blī̆ken, v.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007. ↩

27. Douglas Harper (2001–2026), “blight”, in Online Etymology Dictionary. ↩

28. “blight, v.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, July 2023; “blight, v.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022. ↩