Write height for any measurement, from how tall you are to how high a shelf hangs. Hight is an old poetic word that means “named,” so it doesn’t belong in modern writing about size.
The two words sound exactly alike, which is why people mix up height and hight so often. The surprise is that one well-known dictionary still lists hight as a spelling of height, and Noah Webster once preferred it. Below you’ll see what each source says and the few times hight is still the right choice.
Hight Means “Named,” Not “Tall”
In today’s dictionaries, hight has one job. Merriam-Webster lists it as an archaic adjective meaning “called” or “named,” first recorded in the 1400s. Archaic just means old and no longer used in everyday speech.
Poets used it to introduce a name. Lord Byron wrote “Childe Harold was he hight,” meaning “he was named Childe Harold.” Edmund Spenser used it the same way in The Faerie Queene.
A sentence like “My hight is six feet” isn’t an old spelling at work. It’s a typo for height.
What Dictionaries Actually Say About Hight
Most spelling pages call hight plain wrong. The dictionaries don’t fully agree, and that matters if you ever look the word up yourself.
| Dictionary | What it says about hight |
| Merriam-Webster (online) | Only the archaic “named” sense. No measurement sense. |
| American Heritage, 5th edition | Only the archaic “named” sense. |
| Collins Complete & Unabridged | An archaic, poetic verb meaning “to name or call.” |
| Dictionary.com | The “named” sense, plus a second entry where hight simply means “height.” |
| Webster’s Revised Unabridged, 1913 | Height is the main entry, with a note that it is “written also hight.” |
| Webster’s American Dictionary, 1828 | HIGHT is the main entry for the measurement word. |
Why one dictionary still lists hight as a variant
Dictionary.com’s entry for height shows “Sometimes hight” as another spelling. That listing records history. Merriam-Webster, American Heritage, and Collins leave the measurement sense out completely.
Noah Webster’s hight, and how it disappeared
Webster’s 1828 dictionary made hight the main spelling, with highth as a second choice. His sample sentence reads “The eagle flies at a great hight.”
The choice didn’t last. By the 1913 edition of Webster’s dictionary, height was back in the lead, and hight got only a short note. Today’s Merriam-Webster, the publisher that carried Webster’s dictionary forward, gives hight just the “named” sense.
A variant listing tells you a spelling once existed. It doesn’t make that spelling safe for a school paper, a résumé, or a product listing.
Why Height Ends in “t” and Not “th”
Height is an old word. Merriam-Webster dates it to before the 1100s. It was built the same way as width and depth: an adjective plus a “th” ending.
The “t” came from northern England. In Middle English, the English spoken from about 1100 to 1500, the “gh” in the word was still pronounced. It sounded like the “ch” in loch.
Very few English words paired that sound with a “th.” In northern speech, the “th” hardened into a plain “t,” as Merriam-Webster explains. Later the “gh” sound faded, but the letters stayed. That’s why height has silent letters and a “t” ending.
The “th” forms hung on for a long time:
- John Milton wrote highth, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary.
- Benjamin Franklin wrote about the “Heighth of the Tide.”
- George Washington used highth in a 1763 letter ordering a suit.
- By 1850, Charles Dickens gave heighth to dialect speakers such as Mr. Peggotty in David Copperfield.
Sources date the final switch differently. World Wide Words says highth and heighth were the standard spellings until the late 1600s. Merriam-Webster says the spellings competed into the 1700s. The Online Etymology Dictionary says the “t” pronunciation wasn’t settled until the 1800s.
Book data shows how far heighth has fallen. In Google Books Ngram data, books from 1700 used heighth about once for every five uses of height. By 2022, heighth had almost vanished. Hight appeared about 3 times per 1,000 uses of height, and that count includes surnames and the “named” sense.
Height, Heighth, Highth, and Hight Side by Side
| Form | What it is | Use it in modern writing? |
| height | The standard word for vertical size, high position, or a peak | Correct |
| hight (meaning “height”) | An old spelling, the main entry in Webster’s 1828 dictionary | Incorrect |
| hight (meaning “named”) | An archaic, poetic word | Only in writing that is meant to sound old |
| heighth | An old spelling, now a dialect form | Incorrect |
| highth | An old spelling used by Milton and Washington | Only inside quotations |
Say It “Hite,” With No “th” at the End
Height rhymes with kite. Hight sounds exactly the same, so your ear can’t catch the typo for you.
Plenty of people say “heighth,” especially right after width and length. Merriam-Webster labels that pronunciation nonstandard in its height entry. Its separate heighth entry calls the word chiefly dialectal, meaning it belongs to certain regions.
Not everyone is that strict. World Wide Words notes that the “th” version is heard among educated North Americans, and that some authorities there accept it. Grammarist reports that it turns up most in sports writing and TV sports commentary.
For a job interview, a class presentation, or a podcast, “hite” is the safe choice.
When Hight Is Actually the Right Word
Nearly every time, you want height. These are the few cases where hight stays.
| Your situation | Write | Example |
| You mean size, distance, or the peak of something | height | “At the height of the rush, the café served 200 orders an hour.” |
| You’re writing old-style verse or fantasy and mean “named” | hight | “In the old tale, a knight hight Valentine rode north.” |
| It’s a surname or company name | Hight, as the owner spells it | Dictionary.com’s sample sentences mention a trucking company named Hight. |
| You’re quoting an old text that spells it hight | The original spelling | “The eagle flies at a great hight.” (Webster, 1828) |
A few practical notes:
- Names: Spell-checkers may “fix” the surname Hight, so check names by hand before you send.
- Old Scottish records: The Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue lists hight as one spelling of hicht, the Scots word for height, from around 1300. Quote those records as printed.
- Fantasy writing: Use hight as “named” only in a passage that already sounds old. In a modern sentence, readers will take it for a typo.
Height in Specs, Code, and Flight Data
Some fields treat height as a defined term, so a typo or a wrong word costs more.
- Aviation. Under international aviation definitions, height is measured from a chosen reference point and altitude from mean sea level. Elevation is how high a spot on the ground sits above sea level (SKYbrary). Example: “The drone climbed to a height of 300 feet above the field.”
- Code. Browsers can silently skip a height rule they can’t read, so the box keeps its default size. A Firefox bug report shows a chat window that stayed the wrong size because “height” was misspelled in the code. Example: “Set the image height to auto so it scales on phones.”
- Health and travel forms. “Enter the patient’s height in centimeters, not inches.” “The carry-on limit lists height, width, and depth, so check all three.”
- News writing. AP style uses numerals for heights, as in “He is 5 feet 6 inches tall.” Hyphens join the words when the measurement comes right before a noun: “the 5-foot-6-inch man.”
Hieght, Heigth, and Other Ways to Lose the “eight”
Hight isn’t the only slip. Watch for these too:
- hieght: The i and e are flipped. Height is one of the exceptions to “i before e.”
- heigth: The t and h trade places, copying the “th” ending of width and length.
- heighths: The plural is just heights, as in “afraid of heights” or “the heights above the valley.”
One hook that helps: height and weight sit next to each other on medical forms, and both end in “-eight.”
Before you send, look at what the sentence is about. If it measures something or names a peak, the word is height. Save hight for a line meant to sound five hundred years old, or for a person whose last name it is.
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I’m Hazel, and I studied BSC English at GCUF. I focus on explaining word meanings in simple, clear language that anyone can understand. My goal is helping readers grasp everyday English, confusing terms, and slang used in real conversations and social media. I believe language learning works best when definitions connect to actual life situations. Through careful research and straightforward explanations, I make vocabulary accessible for students, learners, and anyone curious about how English really works in daily use.