Wit

Wit comes from the Latin Vitus, and Vitus grows from vita, the word for life. The same root sits inside English words like vital and vitamin. That is the whole origin, plain and short. The English meaning is a single word. Life.

Święty Wit, known in Latin as Vitus, was an early Christian martyr whose cult reached Poland long ago. His name day falls on 15 June, and a boy called Wit meets it every year on a school register or an imieniny list. The Polish gloss, pełen życia and ochoczy, reads the Latin forward: full of life, eager, quick to say yes.

The sense of eagerness was attached later, drawn out of the bare Latin vita over centuries of use. What stays fixed underneath is that first root. Wit means life.