wits

1. 1.

   the basic human power of intelligent thought and perception

   “he used his wits to get ahead”

   “I was scared out of my wits”

   “he still had all his marbles and was in full possession of a lively mind”

   Synonymsmarbles

   Broaderintelligence

Other forms of wits

plural

witses·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about wits

What does wits mean?

wits means "the basic human power of intelligent thought and perception".

How many syllables are in wits?

wits has 1 syllable: wits. In IPA it is /ˈwɪts/.

What is another word for wits?

Close synonyms include marbles. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is wits a common word?

wits is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.