plight

Pluralplights

Formsplights, plighting, plighted

1. 1
   bad situationnouncountable

   A dire or unfortunate situation in which someone or something finds itself.

   The documentary drew attention to the plight of families left homeless by the floods.

   Few people in the capital understood the farmers' plight after three years of drought.

   Similarpredicament, situation, difficulty

   Note

   Two Middle English words met in this one: plit, a fold or wrinkle that had come to mean a bad situation, and pliht, a risky promise or a peril. That meeting is why the plight of flood victims and the wedding pledge share a spelling. It usually says whose trouble it is, as in Gosling's plight worsened.

2. 2
   verbtransitive

   To pledge one's troth, or a similar promise of faithfulness, as part of a marriage ceremony.

   In front of both families, the couple plighted their troth beneath the old oak tree.

   Couples who marry in the village chapel still plight their troth with the traditional words.

   Similarpledge

3. 3
   pledge yourselfverbreflexivetransitive

   To promise oneself to someone, or to bind oneself to do something.

   At nineteen she plighted herself to a sailor she had known for barely a month.

   Few young men were willing to plight themselves to serve a cause they barely understood.

   Similarpledge, promise, commit, bind

4. 4
   dangernoundialectal

   A moment or situation of danger or peril.

   Note

   Where the risk meaning is danger in general, this one counts dangers one at a time, a plight and then another. Outside dialect it is hard to tell from the everyday meaning, since a dangerous moment is also a bad situation to be in.

5. 5
   responsibilitynoundialectal

   Responsibility for whatever consequences follow; risk, danger, or peril.

   Note

   A second, older line of the word starts here, in Old English pliht, peril, risk or damage, and behind it an early Germanic word for care, responsibility and duty. Both halves survive in this sense: the danger, and the duty of answering for what follows. It now lives on mainly in dialect, and the same root gives the verb for pledging.

6. 6
   blamenoundialectal

   Blame or guilt, or the fault, wrongdoing, sin, or crime that brings it.

   Note

   Guilt faces backward in this sense, where the responsibility meaning faces forward: there a person answers for what may follow, here for a wrong already done, from a small fault to a crime or a sin.

7. 7
   dutynoundialectal

   A person's office, duty, or charge.

   Note

   Office here means a post or task someone holds, not a room with desks. The sense stays nearest the word's root meaning of care and duty: a person's plight was what was theirs to look after, the charge they would answer for.

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