Forms: (1 íʓʓað, íʓeoð), 2 eyt, 3 æit, eit, 7–8 eyt, eyet, eyght, 8 aight, ayte, 7– ait, 9 eyot. [OE. íʓʓað, íʓeoð was perh. a dim. of íeʓ, íʓ, island (though the ordinary power of -að was to make abstr. nouns, as in huntað hunting). The subsequent phonetic history is obscure: the normal descendant of íʓʓað would be ieth (cf. flieth); the vowel of ME. eyt might arise from an OE. variant éʓað, as in éʓ isle for íʓ (cf. also ON. eið ‘peninsula,’ in Shetland eid ‘a tongue of land’); but the t is unexplained; the later -et, and mod. -ot, are artificial spellings after islet (MFr. islette) and mod. Fr. îlot.] An islet or small isle; especially one in a river, as the aits or eyots of the Thames.
894. O. E. Chron. Hie fluʓon ofer Temese buton ælcum forda þa up be Colne on anne iʓʓað.
c. 1000. Ælfric, Hom. (Sweet 77). Þa asende hé hine … to ánum iʓeoðe þe is Paðmas ʓeciʓed.
1052–67. Charter of Eadweard, in Cod. Dipl., IV. 211. On máden and on eyten, on waterin and on weren.
1205. Layamon, 23872. Ferde to þan æite mid aðele his wepnen [1250 He wende to þan yllond].
1649. R. Hodges, Plainest Direc., 2. The Ait where the Osiers grew.
1677. Coles, An Eyet, Eyght. Insula minima in fluento.
1725. De Foe, etc., Tour Gt. Brit., II. 70. Not far from Maidenhead Bridge, is a small Aight or Islet in the River.
1772. Barrington, in Phil. Trans., LXII. 289. A man near Brentford says, that he hath caught them [swallows] in this state in the eyt opposite to that town.
1835. T. Hook, G. Gurney (1850), I. iv. 61. The ayte opposite Mrs. Forty’s excellent inn.
1851. Sir F. Palgrave, Norm. & Eng., I. 321. Not presqu’isles, but completely eyots and islands.
1864. R. F. Burton, Dahome, 33. A semi-stagnant stream, dotted with little green aits.
1880. Times,, 16 March, 1/3. Thames Conservancy…. All Steam tugs are to be placed outside Chiswick Ait, on the Middlesex side.
Comb. ait-land, obs., an island.
1205. Layamon, 1117. Logice hatte þat eitlond [1250 yllond]. Ibid., 21750. Sixti æit-londes; beoð i þan watere longe.
