A wight is a living creature, or a restless spirit. A poor wight, the wights walked, an unhappy wight.
The old sense is simply a creature or person and it survives in poetry. Fantasy fiction gave it the second sense, of an undead being, largely through Tolkien's barrow-wights and everything that followed. Note that the Old English wiht meant a thing or creature, and aught and naught are built on it.
1nounwightA living creature or person.
“The old man was a poor, lonely wight with no friends in the world.”
2nounrestlessA restless undead spirit, in fantasy.
“In the story, pale wights rose from the ancient graves and wandered the hills at night.”
wight is a creature or spirit.
WIGHT → the Isle of WIGHT, and the dead who walk
The island off the south coast of England spells it this way, and the walking dead in the stories are wights as well: a creature, or a spirit that will not lie still.
hooks ontoisland
Old English wiht means a thing or creature. Aught and naught are built from the same word.
Proto-Indo-European
*wekʷ-
Proto-Indo-European
*wekti- — cause, sake, thing
Proto-Germanic
*wihtiz — thing, creature
Proto-West Germanic
*wihti
Old English
wiht — thing, creature
Middle English
wight
English, today
wight
Built from
From Middle English wight, wiȝt, from Old English wiht (“thing, creature”), from Proto-West Germanic wihti, from Proto-Germanic wihtiz (“thing, creature”) literally “being”, from Proto-Indo-European wekti- (“cause, sake, thing”), from wekʷ- (“to say, tell”). Cognate with Scots wicht (“creature, being, human”), Dutch wicht (“child, baby, girl”), German Low German Wicht (“girl; wight”), German Wicht (“wretch, wight, little creature, scoundrel”), Danish vætte (“underground creature, gnome”), Norwegian Bokmål vette (“underground creature, gnome”), Swedish vätte (“underground creature, gnome”), Icelandic vættur (“imp, elf”). a doublet of whit.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA