• (RP) IPA: /bɪˈnaɪtɪd/
• (GA) IPA: /bɪˈnaɪtɪd/, /bə-/, [-ɾɪd]

benighted

1. (obsolete or poetic) overtake#Verb|Overtaken by night; especially of a traveller, etc.: caught out by oncoming night before reach#Verb|reaching one's destination.
   • 1678, John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World, to That which is to Come: […], London: Printed for Nath[aniel] Ponder […], OCLC 228725984 ↗; reprinted in The Pilgrim’s Progress (The Noel Douglas Replicas), London: Noel Douglas, […], 1928, OCLC 5190338 ↗, pages 51–52 ↗:

     The Porter anſwered, This Man is in a Journey from the City of Deſtruction to Mount Zion, but being weary, and benighted, he asked me if he might lodge here to night; ſo I told him I would call for thee, who after diſcourſe had with him, mayeſt do as ſeemeth thee good, even according to the Law of the Houſe.

   • 1742, [Edward Young], “Night the Ninth and Last. The Consolation. Containing, among Other Things, I. A Moral Survey of the Nocturnal Heavens. II. A Night-Address to the Deity. […]”, in The Complaint: Or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death, & Immortality, London: Printed [by Samuel Richardson] for A[ndrew] Millar […], and R[obert] Dodsley […], published 1750, OCLC 753424981 ↗, page 317 ↗:

     Where art thou, poor benighted Traveller! / The Stars will light thee; tho' the Moon ſhould fail. / Where art Thou, more benighted! more aſtray! / In Ways immoral? The Stars call thee back; / And, if obey'd their Counſel, ſet thee right.

   • 1810, Walter Scott, The Lady of the Lake; a Poem, Edinburgh: Printed [by James Ballantyne and Co.] for John Ballantyne and Co.; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, and William Miller, OCLC 6632529 ↗, canto I (The Chase), stanza XXI, page 27 ↗:

     Slighting the petty need he showed, / He told of his benighted road; [...]

2. (obsolete) plunge#Verb|Plunged into darkness.
   • 1600, “The Sheepheards Sorrow, Being Disdained in Loue ↗”, in Englands Helicon, London: Printed by I. R[oberts] for Iohn Flasket, […], OCLC 837537973 ↗:

     Rob the Spheare of lines vnited, / Make a ſuddaine voide in nature: / Force the day to be benighted, / Reaue the cauſe of time and creature.

3. (figuratively) lack#Verb|Lacking education or knowledge; unenlightened; also, lacking morality; immoral, unscrupulous.

   Antonyms: unbenighted

   • 1742, [Edward Young], “Night the Ninth and Last. The Consolation. Containing, among Other Things, I. A Moral Survey of the Nocturnal Heavens. II. A Night-Address to the Deity. […]”, in The Complaint: Or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death, & Immortality, London: Printed [by Samuel Richardson] for A[ndrew] Millar […], and R[obert] Dodsley […], published 1750, OCLC 753424981 ↗, page 317 ↗:

     Where art thou, poor benighted Traveller! / The Stars will light thee; tho' the Moon ſhould fail. / Where art Thou, more benighted! more aſtray! / In Ways immoral? The Stars call thee back; / And, if obey'd their Counſel, ſet thee right.

   • 1854, Arthur Pendennis [pseudonym; William Makepeace Thackeray], “Colonel Newcome’s Wild Oats”, in The Newcomes: Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family, volume I, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], OCLC 809623158 ↗, page 15 ↗:

     [T]o attend to the interests of the enslaved negro; to awaken the benighted Hottentot to a sense of truth; to convert Jews, Turks, Infidels, and Papists; [...] all these things had this woman to do, and for near fourscore years she fought her fight womanfully: [...]

   • 1855 December – 1857 June​, Charles Dickens, “In which a Great Patriotic Conference is Holden”, in Little Dorrit, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1857, OCLC 83401042 ↗, book the second (Riches), page 417 ↗:

     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.

4. (figuratively, obsolete) Difficult to understand; abstruse, obscure#Adjective|obscure.
   • 1647, Theodore de la Guard [pseudonym; Nathaniel Ward], The Simple Cobler of Aggawam in America. […], London: Printed by J[ohn] D[ever] & R[obert] I[bbitson] for Stephen Bowtell, […], OCLC 560031272 ↗; The Simple Cobler of Aggawam in America (Force’s Collection of Historical Tracts; vol. III, no. 8), 5th edition, reprinted at Boston in N. England: For Daniel Henchman, […]; [Washington, D.C.: W. Q. Force], 1713 (1844 printing), OCLC 800593321 ↗, page 16 ↗:

     [O]thers, held very good men, are at a dead stand, not knowing what to do or say; and are therefore called Seekers, looking for new Nuntio's from Christ, to assoil these benighted questions, and to give new Orders for new Churches.

1. Simple past tense and past participle of benight