benighted
in a sentence

The poor, benighted innocent had never seen such a man. (source) Dickens, Charles, David Copperfield
benighted = lacking knowledge or experience

But their main gate used to come out on a different pass, one more easy to travel by, so that they often caught people benighted near their gates. (source) J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, 1937
benighted = in the dark (figuratively) due to a lack of knowledge, advantages, or moral understanding

The verse died heavily away, and was lengthened by a chorus, not of human voices, but of all the sounds of the benighted wilderness pealing in awful harmony together. (source)

We were supposed to ignore those benighted sheep, as Dad called them.† (source) Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle, 2005

Nelson, as usual, was the one who finally took pity upon our benighted stupidity and told us what was up: kukwela.† (source)

Last year, some benighted fool in a hot air balloon came bumbling over the island and had a good long look.† (source) Kenneth Oppel, Airborn, 2004

Said Sullivan, "It soon became noticeable that he was progressively and grossly apologizing to the Eastern men for the presence of their benighted brethren of the West."† (source)

What I mean is that since the preponderance of cultural influences has come down to us from European early settlers, and since those early settlers inflicted their values on the "benighted" cultures they encountered ("benighted," from the Old English, meaning "anyone darker than myself"), those inflicted values have gained ascendancy.† (source)

And Hire is off into the lurid main avenue of the Towne Hall, a tunnel of flickering and pulsating loglo through which black creatures sprint like benighted sperm up the old fallopians, sharp angular things clenched in their hands.† (source) Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash, 1992

Oh well one must get used to such things in our situation, we are virtually prisoners ourselves you know, although one must feel pity for these poor benighted creatures, and after all she was trained as a servant, and it's as well to keep them employed, she is a wonderful seamstress, quite deft and accomplished, she is a great help in that way especially with the girls' frocks, she has an eye for trimmings, and under happier circumstances she could have made an excellent milliner's…† (source) Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace, 1996

But at the end, after all the blood and grief, all those benighted souls who without us would have suffered in darkness are happy citizens.† (source) Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice, 2013

show 41 more with this conextual meaning

"That is just so outdated and benighted and so …. wrong, I'm not even going to dignify it with an answer."† (source)

Is there no diet Coke in this benighted country?† (source) Meg Cabot, Queen of Babble, 2006

But that impression—of a certain amount of learning, of casually expressed good manners, of sophistication—made me cringe at my raw ignorance and the benighted seizure I had had on the subway train, with my simpleminded premonition of squalid gloom and cultural deprivation.† (source) William Styron, Sophie's Choice, 1976

She paused to look out through the night at the dark shores of the Virginia of our destination, removed by staggering dimensions of time and space from her own benighted, cursed and—to me even at that moment—all but incomprehensible history.† (source) William Styron, Sophie's Choice, 1976

You've read Faulkner, Nathan, and you still have this assy and intolerable attitude of superiority toward the place, and are unable to see how Bilbo is less a villain than a wretched offshoot of the whole benighted system?"† (source) William Styron, Sophie's Choice, 1976

Which of course would send me into hoots of laughter were it not so benighted a viewpoint, so that even though I concede to Hobbs that Rothschild and Warburg are certainly Hebraic names I attempt to tell him that greed is not a racial but a human predilection and then I proceed to tick off such names as Carnegie, Rockefeller, Frick, Mellon, Harriman, Huntington, Whitney, Duke, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.† (source) William Styron, Sophie's Choice, 1976

People, benighted ones, they came from all over Austria.† (source) Henry Roth, Call It Sleep, 1934

I want to get some information about this benighted town.† (source)

…substanceless, a little behind and above all the other straightforward and logical even though (to him) incomprehensible ultimatums and affirmations and defiances and challenges and repudiations, with an air of sardonic and indolent detachment like that of a youthful Roman consul making the Grand Tour of his day among the barbarian hordes which his grandfather conquered, benighted in a brawling and childish and quite deadly mud-castle household in a miasmic and spirit-ridden forest.† (source)

From a safe distance and still rubbing his buttocks, "Benighted fool!" shouted the man from The Fordian Science Monitor, "why don't you take soma?"† (source) Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, 1932

Or it resembled a greedy, avid, delicious quagmire which would swallow up the lost, benighted traveler with a last tired, liquid, contented sigh.† (source)

Sir Grummore Grammursum, who was staying the night because he had been benighted out questin' after a specially long run, said that when he was their age he was swished every mornin' because he would go hawkin' instead of learnin'.† (source)

He believed as firmly as Arthur did, as firmly as the benighted Christian, that there was such a thing as Right Finally, there was the impediment of his nature.† (source)

In at the window came also the unfolding scent of benighted flowers, for the currants, the wild cherries, the plums and the hawthorn were already in bloom, and no less than five nightingales within earshot were holding a contest of beauty among the bowery, the looming trees.† (source)

These few sounds wandering in the dark had made their two benighted lives tragic to my mind.† (source) Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim, 1900

"I suppose you think I'm awfully benighted."† (source)

Without Ligeia I was but as a child groping benighted.† (source) Edgar Allan Poe, Ligeia, 1850

Oh, thou poor lonely little benighted boy!† (source)

The poor, benighted innocent had never seen such a man.† (source)

The light is come upon the dark benighted way.† (source) Charles Dickens, Bleak House, 1853

She gave up trying to understand herself, and the vast armies of the benighted, who follow neither the heart nor the brain, and march to their destiny by catch-words.† (source) E.M. Forster, A Room With A View, 1908

No, that was a benighted voice, in Herr Settembrini's opinion—which he delivered with much emotion.† (source) Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, 1924

The fashionable intelligence has found it out and communicates the glad tidings to benighted England.† (source) Charles Dickens, Bleak House, 1853

As I was crossing one of the most remote districts of Pennsylvania I was benighted, and obliged to beg for hospitality at the gate of a wealthy planter, who was a Frenchman by birth.† (source)

They felt it might be a being partially benighted in the vale of ignorance, but it could not be one who would willingly devote his rich natural gifts to the purposes of wanton treachery.† (source)

The whole peaceful and quiet scene lay glimmering in twilight before the eyes of the traveller, giving him good assurance of lodging for the night; since it was a special duty of those hermits who dwelt in the woods, to exercise hospitality towards benighted or bewildered passengers.† (source) Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe, 1820

"Yes," said George, "I says to him, 'Tom, you ought to see some of Aunt Chloe's pies; they're the right sort,' says I." "Pity, now, Tom couldn't," said Aunt Chloe, on whose benevolent heart the idea of Tom's benighted condition seemed to make a strong impression.† (source)

All people knew (or thought they knew) that he had made himself immensely rich; and, for that reason alone, prostrated themselves before him, more degradedly and less excusably than the darkest savage creeps out of his hole in the ground to propitiate, in some log or reptile, the Deity of his benighted soul.† (source) Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit, 1857

When he had identified these objects in what benighted mind he had, he said, in a dialect that was just intelligible: "How goes it, Jacques?"† (source)

Besides, we are in no hurry: we are not going far above Oxford; and even if we are benighted, we shall have the moon, which will give us nothing worse of a night than a greyer day.† (source) William Morris, News from Nowhere, 1890

"By my beads," said the hermit, stopping short in a grand flourish, "here come more benighted guests.† (source) Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe, 1820

Know, then, innocent eastern friend, that in benighted regions of the west, where the mud is of unfathomable and sublime depth, roads are made of round rough logs, arranged transversely side by side, and coated over in their pristine freshness with earth, turf, and whatsoever may come to hand, and then the rejoicing native calleth it a road, and straightway essayeth to ride thereupon.† (source)

But Miss Mills, mistrusting the acceptability of her presence to the higher powers, had not yet gone; and we were all benighted in the Desert of Sahara.† (source)

And once when he was speaking of the benighted condition of the king of Timbuctoo, and the number of his wives who were likewise in darkness, some gipsy miscreant from the crowd asked, "How many is there at Queen's Crawley, Young Squaretoes?" to the surprise of the platform, and the ruin of Mr. Pitt's speech.† (source)

But while simple folks who are out of the world, or country people with a taste for the genteel, behold these ladies in their seeming glory in public places, or envy them from afar off, persons who are better instructed could inform them that these envied ladies have no more chance of establishing themselves in "society," than the benighted squire's wife in Somersetshire who reads of their doings in the Morning Post.† (source)

And so this squire was benighted, and by misfortune he happened to come to a castle where dwelled a baron.† (source) Thomas Malory, Le Morte D'Arthur, 1485

And the good knight, Galahad, rode so long till he came that night to the Castle of Carboneck; and it befell him thus that he was benighted in an hermitage.† (source) Thomas Malory, Le Morte D'Arthur, 1485

…amain By Leo, and the Virgin, and the Scales, As deep as Capricorn; to bring in change Of seasons to each clime; else had the spring Perpetual smiled on earth with vernant flowers, Equal in days and nights, except to those Beyond the polar circles; to them day Had unbenighted shone, while the low sun, To recompense his distance, in their sight Had rounded still the horizon, and not known Or east or west; which had forbid the snow From cold Estotiland, and south as far Beneath Magellan.† (source) John Milton, Paradise Lost, 1667
standard prefix: The prefix "un-" in unbenighted means not and reverses the meaning of benighted. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.

You benighted roamer of Amazonia! you Patagonian! you Feejeeman!† (source) Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1855

And so this squire was benighted, and by misfortune he happened to come to a castle where dwelled a baron.† (source)

And the good knight, Galahad, rode so long till he came that night to the Castle of Carboneck; and it befell him thus that he was benighted in an hermitage.† (source)

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benightedin a sentence

benighted
in a sentence