Dictionaries › English

wean

Pronunciation: /ˈwiːn/

The English word “wean” has 7 meanings listed here.

verb

  1. To cease giving breast milk to an offspring; to accustom and reconcile (a child or young animal) to a want or deprivation of mother's milk; to take from the breast or udder.
  2. To habituate (someone) to something, especially since childhood.
  3. To cease to depend on the mother's milk for nutrition.
  4. To cause to quit something to which one is addicted, dependent, or habituated.
  5. To cease to depend.
  6. To raise, to help grow toward maturity

noun

  1. A young child.

Etymology

From Middle English wenen, from Old English wenian (“to accustom; habituate; train; prepare; make fit”), from Proto-West Germanic *wannjan, from Proto-Germanic *wanjaną (“to make wont; accustom”), from Proto-Indo-European *wenh₁- (“to strive for; wish; love”). Cognate with Dutch wennen, German gewöhnen, Danish vænne, Swedish vänja, Icelandic venja. Related via PIE to wone, wont, and wonder, and…

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “wean” there

More English words

About this dictionary

The English dictionary on Glottosphere has 650,529 entries with a page. Browse the English dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.