An archaic or obsolete spelling variant of 'great,' used in Middle English and early modern texts.
From Middle English 'greit' or 'grete,' a variant spelling of 'great' from Old English 'grēat,' before standardized spelling conventions emerged in printing.
Before the printing press fixed spelling, 'greit' and 'great' coexisted happily—scribes spelled phonetically, and only dictionaries eventually declared one version 'correct,' erasing centuries of spelling democracy.
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