Origin and history of witty

"mental capacity, the mind as the seat of thinking and reasoning," Old English wit, witt, more commonly gewit "understanding, intellect, sense; knowledge, consciousness, conscience," from Proto-Germanic *wit-, which is reconstructed to be from PIE root *weid- "to see," metaphorically "to know" (also compare wit (v.) and wise (adj.)).

The meaning "ability to connect ideas and express them in an amusing way" is recorded by 1540s, hence "quickness of intellect in speech or writing" (for nuances of usage, see humor (n.)). The sense of "person of wit or learning" is attested from late 15c.

To be at one's wit's end "perplexed, at a loss" is from late 14c. Witjar was old slang (18c.) for "head, skull." Witling (1690s) was "a pretender to wit." Witword was "testament." Also in Middle English of the sensitive faculty generally, and sensory impressions, as wittes five for the five bodily senses (c. 1200).

Germanic cognates include Old Saxon wit, Old Norse vit, Danish vid, Swedish vett, Old Frisian wit, Old High German wizzi "knowledge, understanding, intelligence, mind," German Witz "wit, witticism, joke," Gothic unwiti "ignorance."

A witty saying proves nothing. [Voltaire, Diner du Comte de Boulainvilliers]

Wit ought to be five or six degrees above the ideas that form the intelligence of an audience. [Stendhal, "Life of Henry Brulard"]

"witty sentence or remark, an observation characterized by wit," 1670s, coined by Dryden (as wittycism) from witty ; the context makes clear it is on the model of criticism but it perhaps also suggests Gallicism, etc.

"That every witticism is an inexact thought: that what is perfectly true is imperfectly witty ...." [Walter Savage Landor, "Imaginary Conversations"]

very common adjective suffix, "full of, covered with, or characterized by" the thing expressed by the noun, Middle English -i, from Old English -ig, from Proto-Germanic *-iga-, from PIE -(i)ko-, adjectival suffix, cognate with elements in Greek -ikos, Latin -icus (see -ic). Germanic cognates include Dutch, Danish, German -ig, Gothic -egs.

It was used from 13c. with verbs (drowsy, clingy), and by 15c. with other adjectives (crispy). Chiefly with monosyllables; with more than two the effect tends to become comedic.

*

Variant forms in -y for short, common adjectives (vasty, hugy) helped poets after the loss of grammatically empty but metrically useful -e in late Middle English. Verse-writers adapted to -y forms, often artfully, as in Sackville's "The wide waste places, and the hugy plain" (and the huge plain would have been a metrical balk).

After Coleridge's criticism of it as archaic artifice, poets gave up stilly (Moore probably was last to make it work, with "Oft in the Stilly Night"), paly (which Keats and Coleridge himself had used) and the rest.

Jespersen ("Modern English Grammar," 1954) also lists bleaky (Dryden), bluey, greeny, and other color words, lanky, plumpy, stouty, and the slang rummy. Vasty survives, he writes, only in imitation of Shakespeare; cooly and moisty (Chaucer, hence Spenser) he regards as fully obsolete. But in a few cases he notes (haughty, dusky) they seem to have supplanted shorter forms.