wean
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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4 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "wean", 4-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "wean" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "wean" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
wean is aEnglishverb. It means: 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. Pronounced /wiːn/. Often confused with win and won.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | wean |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /wiːn/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #40,968 |
| Misspellings tracked | 3 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for wean is 4 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /wiːn/. Corpus data places it at rank #40,968 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 6 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 3 documented wrong-spelling variants for wean, with forms such as "weann", "wena", and "wwean". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "win", "won", "web", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: 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… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is wean, spelled W-E-A-N, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1To 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.
- 2To 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.
- 3To cease to depend on the mother's milk for nutrition.
- 4To cause to quit something to which one is addicted, dependent, or habituated.
- 5To cease to depend.
- 6To raise, to help grow toward maturity
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 perhaps win.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: weann,wena,wwean
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for wean
Misspelling Variants of "wean"
Frequency rank: #40,968 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter W in our English index: