Other forms: knitting, knitted, knits
To knit is to make cloth by looping wool around two long needles, one stitch pulled through another, row after row. A scarf growing in someone's lap on a train, and the small click of the needles under the conversation.
Knitting is the noun for both the craft and the piece in progress, as in she picked up her knitting. Broken bones knit as well, meaning they grow back together, and so do people: a close-knit family, a street knitted together by one long winter. You can knit your brows, which is to frown until the eyebrows pull in. Both knitted and knit are used for the past, with knitted the safer choice in British English, and the k is silent, so say it nit.
1verbknitTo make cloth or clothing by looping yarn with two needles.~41%
“She knitted him a jumper two sizes too big.”
2verbbrokenOf a broken bone: to grow back together.~2%
“The bone knitted cleanly in six weeks.”
3verbjoinTo join people or things closely together.~57%
“The strike knitted the whole street together.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 19 sentences found in the wild and placed 19 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Knit has no long borrowed chain behind it. It is a homegrown Germanic word, cousin to Low German knutten and Old Norse knyta, which gave Danish knytte and Norwegian knyta. All of them belong with knot. Knitting is knotting, done in a long orderly line.
Middle English
knytten
English, today
knit
From Middle English knytten. Cognate with Low German knütten and Old Norse knýta (whence Danish knytte, Norwegian Nynorsk knyta). More at knot.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA