Other forms: mists, misting
Mist is the thin white cloud that sits on the ground and softens everything more than fifty metres away. Early morning over a field, the hills losing their edges, headlights carving a cone through it.
Mist is fog's lighter cousin: through mist you can still see a fair way, through fog you cannot. It also means a fine spray of tiny drops, as in a mist of perfume or the mist a shop sprays over the vegetables. As a verb it is what glass does: the windows mist up, the bathroom mirror mists over, and eyes mist with tears. Misty covers both the weather and the memory, a misty morning and misty-eyed about the past. The phrases you meet are sea mist, morning mist and a mist of rain.
1nounmistA thin cloud of tiny water drops near the ground that makes it hard to see far.
“A low mist lay over the river until the sun burned it off.”
2nounfineA fine spray of tiny drops of liquid in the air.
“She sprayed a mist of water over the leaves.”
3verbbecomeTo become covered with a film of tiny water drops.
“The car windows misted up as soon as we climbed in.”
mist is a low cloud at ground level.
Also accepted in games: fog
Mist is old and unchanged. Old English mist meant both the weather and dimness of eyesight, from Proto-Germanic *mihstaz, "mist, fog", from a Proto-Indo-European root *h₃meygʰ-, "cloud, fog, drizzle". The same root shows up in Lithuanian miglà, "fog", Sanskrit megha, "cloud", and Russian mgla, "haze", so half of Europe has been squinting through the same word for thousands of years.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₃migʰstos
Proto-Germanic
*mihstaz — mist, fog
Old English
mist — mist; darkness; dimness (of eyesight)
Middle English
mist
English, today
mist
Built from
The noun is from Middle English mist, from Old English mist (“mist; darkness; dimness (of eyesight)”), from Proto-Germanic mihstaz (“mist, fog”), from Proto-Indo-European h₃migʰstos, from the root h₃meygʰ- (“cloud, fog, drizzle”). Cognate with Scots mist (“mist, fog”), West Frisian mist (“mist”), Dutch mist (“mist”), Swedish mist (“mist, fog”), Icelandic mistur (“mist”), West Frisian miegelje (“to drizzle”), Dutch - dialectal miggelen, miegelen (“to drizzle”), Lithuanian miglà (“fog”), Sanskrit मेघ (“cloud”), Russian мгла (“fog, haze”). The verb is from Middle English misten, from Old English mistian.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA