Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • transitive verb To think; suppose.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Doubt; conjecture.
  • To be of opinion; have the notion; think; imagine; suppose.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb Obs. or Poetic To think; to imagine; to fancy.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun obsolete Doubt; conjecture.
  • verb archaic To suppose, imagine; to think, believe.
  • verb dated To expect, hope or wish.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English wenen, from Old English wēnan; see wen- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English wenen, from Old English wēnan, from Proto-Germanic *wēnijanan. Cognate with Dutch wanen, German wähnen.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English wene, from Old English wēn, wēna ("hope, weening, expectation"), from Proto-Germanic *wēniz, *wēnōn (“hope, expectation”), from Proto-Indo-European *wen- (“to strive, love, want, reach, win”). Cognate with German Wahn ("illusion, false hope").

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Examples

  • I've smoked for 30+ years and quit 13 days ago, it is hard yes, but mostly due to habit, and you can 'ween' yourself off the nicotine addiction part.

    Propeller Most Popular Stories 2009

  • I think alcohol is the worst out of those 3, I've smoked for 30+ years and quit 13 days ago, it is hard yes, but mostly due to habit, and you can 'ween' yourself off the nicotine addiction part.

    Propeller Most Popular Stories 2009

  • I've smoked for 30+ years and quit 13 days ago, it is hard yes, but mostly due to habit, and you can 'ween' yourself off the nicotine addiction part.

    Propeller Most Popular Stories 2009

  • I think alcohol is the worst out of those 3, I've smoked for 30+ years and quit 13 days ago, it is hard yes, but mostly due to habit, and you can 'ween' yourself off the nicotine addiction part.

    Propeller Most Popular Stories 2009

  • I think alcohol is the worst out of those 3, I've smoked for 30+ years and quit 13 days ago, it is hard yes, but mostly due to habit, and you can 'ween' yourself off the nicotine addiction part.

    Propeller Most Popular Stories 2009

  • I've smoked for 30+ years and quit 13 days ago, it is hard yes, but mostly due to habit, and you can 'ween' yourself off the nicotine addiction part.

    Propeller Most Popular Stories 2009

  • I've smoked for 30+ years and quit 13 days ago, it is hard yes, but mostly due to habit, and you can 'ween' yourself off the nicotine addiction part.

    Propeller Most Popular Stories 2009

  • I've smoked for 30+ years and quit 13 days ago, it is hard yes, but mostly due to habit, and you can 'ween' yourself off the nicotine addiction part.

    Propeller Most Popular Stories 2009

  • I think alcohol is the worst out of those 3, I've smoked for 30+ years and quit 13 days ago, it is hard yes, but mostly due to habit, and you can 'ween' yourself off the nicotine addiction part.

    Propeller Most Popular Stories 2009

  • I think alcohol is the worst out of those 3, I've smoked for 30+ years and quit 13 days ago, it is hard yes, but mostly due to habit, and you can 'ween' yourself off the nicotine addiction part.

    Propeller Most Popular Stories 2009

Comments

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  • ...Miss Howe has reason to apprehend vengeance from me, I ween.

    Lovelace to Belford, Clarissa by Samuel Richardson

    January 4, 2008

  • "But at the last, as a man may not ever endure, Sir Launcelot waxed so faint of fighting and travailing, and was so weary of his great deeds, but he might not lift up his arms for to give one stroke, so that he weened never to have borne arms; and then they all took and led him away into a forest, and there made him to alight and to rest him."

    - Thomas Malory, 'The Holy Grail'.

    September 12, 2009

  • "O laborers, idle shepherds, come, a truth

    I suspect once you've shifted

    the blame to your flutes come undone,

    I ween. No one knows how much

    we've done to ourselves, nor I to each other,

    cracked, before we were born."

    - "The Queen's Apron" by John Ashbery, in Quick Question

    October 11, 2014

  • Gwen makes her swevening schemes As sweetly on Sir Lance she beams. Good night, I ween. Good knight I've seen, Anon I'll seize you in my dreams.

    October 26, 2014