wile

Pronunciation: /waɪl/

The English word “wile” has 2 meanings listed here.

noun

A trick or stratagem practiced for ensnaring or deception; a sly, insidious artifice

verb

To entice or lure.

Etymology

From Middle English wile, wyle, from Old Northern French wile (“guile”) and Old English wīl (“wile, trick”) and wiġle (“divination”), from Proto-Germanic *wīlą (“craft, deceit”) (from Proto-Indo-European *wey- (“to turn, bend”)) and Proto-Germanic *wigulą, *wihulą (“prophecy”) (from Proto-Indo-European *weyk- (“to consecrate, hallow, make holy”)). Cognate with Icelandic vél, væl (“artifice,…

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “wile” there

More English words

About this dictionary

The English dictionary on Glottosphere has 650,529 entries with a page. Browse the English dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.