blest

English

Alternative forms

• blessed
• blessèd (archaic)

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /blɛst/
• Rhymes: -ɛst

Verb

blest

1. Archaic spelling of blessed

Adjective

blest (comparative more blest, superlative most blest)

1. Archaic spelling of blessed
   • c. 1591–1595 (date written), [William Shakespeare], […] Romeo and Iuliet. […] (Second Quarto), London: […] Thomas Creede, for Cuthbert Burby, […], published 1599, →OCLC, [Act III, scene v]:

     Is ſhe not proud? doth ſhe not count her bleſt, / Vnworthy as ſhe is, that we haue wrought / So worthy a Gentleman to be her Bride?

   • 1831, Henry S[cott] Riddell, “A Song of the Wife of Ham”, in Songs of the Ark: with Other Poems, Edinburgh: William Blackwood; London: T[homas] Cadell, […], part fourth, page 248:

     Since fate has let the heart go free / That wish’d so warmly to be bound / By the tie which love eternally / Hath fail’d to fasten round, / Leaving the breast in woful thrall / That else had the blestest been of all.

   • 1847 October 16, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], “Conclusion”, in Jane Eyre. An Autobiography. […], volume III, London: Smith, Elder, and Co., […], →OCLC, page 307:

     I hold myself supremely blest—blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband’s life as fully as he is mine.

   • 1884, Richard F[rancis] Burton, transl., The Lyricks, part I (Sonnets, Canzons, Odes, and Sextines), London: Bernard Quaritch, […], page 262:

     Blest who, by worth empower’d, their glory views, / Blester the hand that could one tress obtain, / But blestest he who doth his Soul maintain / Only on glorious lights these locks diffuse.

   • 1951, Thomas Mann, “The Sieur Eisengrein”, in H[elen] T[racy] Lowe-Porter, transl., The Holy Sinner, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, →LCCN, pages 48–49:

     Nothing was thereby altered or improved in the desperate case of the brother-sister pair, but to the unblessedly blest maiden it seemed even so that by the mere sending of the squire a way out of their misery was already found; […]

Derived terms

• unblest

Anagrams

• Belts, belts, blets

Middle English

Noun

blest

1. Alternative form of blast

Norwegian Bokmål

Etymology

From Danish blæst, from Old Norse blástr. Doublet of blåst.

Noun

blest (definite singular blesten)

1. An incessant wind

   Synonym: blåst

References

• “blest” in The Bokmål Dictionary.