This insistence in using the odious word arises from the fact that a particularly
benighted landsman must imagine the act of anchoring as a process of throwing something overboard, whereas the anchor ready for its work is already overboard, and is not thrown over, but simply allowed to fall.
No other subject gave them half the satisfaction, or commanded half the attention; and but few scenes in my life remain so freshly on my memory, or are so pleasurably recalled to my contemplation, as these hours of intercourse with a distant and
benighted race in the midst of the desert."
But I cut short his appeal, and repulsed him so determinately, so decidedly, and with such a mixture of scornful indignation, tempered with cool, dispassionate sorrow and pity for his
benighted mind, that he withdrew, astonished, mortified, and discomforted; and, a few days after, I heard that he had departed for London.
He hoped that God had sent the English across the ocean, Gentiles as they were, to enlighten this
benighted portion of his once chosen race.
And yet, though she knew the locksmith sought to cheer her, and spoke from no conviction of his own, she was glad to hear even this praise of her poor
benighted son.
When he had identified these objects in what
benighted mind he had, he said, in a dialect that was just intelligible:
The time is short, and much remains to be done before you are fit to proclaim the Gospel of Three Dimensions to your blind
benighted countrymen in Flatland.
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.
"Yet that is considered an excellent school, I find, and I dare say it would be if the
benighted lady did not think it necessary to cram her pupils like Thanks-giving turkeys, instead of feeding them in a natural and wholesome way.
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.
Europeans will better understand his point of view than Americans, poor,
benighted provincials, who are denied a true appreciation of caste and of the fact that "the king can do no wrong." He did not even have to argue the point that she would be much happier amidst the luxuries of a London apartment, fortified as she would be by both his love and his bank account, than lawfully wed to such a one as her social position warranted.
Here they found themselves
benighted in a strange place, and surrounded by savages bent on pilfering, if not upon open robbery.
benighted - overtaken by night or darkness; "benighted (or nighted) travelers hurrying toward home"
benighted - lacking enlightenment or knowledge or culture; "this benighted country"; "benighted ages of barbarism and superstition"; "the dark ages"; "a dark age in the history of education"