wen

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English wen, also wenne,^[2][3] inherited from Old English wenn (“a wen, tumour, wart”), also wænn,^[4][5][6][7] from Proto-Germanic *wanjaz (“a swelling”).^[5][8] It is related to Dutch wen, Middle Low German wene (“wen, wart”), Low German wehne (“tumour, wart”), dialectal German Wenne and dialectal Danish vann (“swelling”).^{[4][5][8][6][3]} The OED, Hoad and the Oxford Dictionary of English call its further origin obscure or unknown.^[4][6][9] Watkins, followed by Etymonline and Merriam-Webster, connects it with Proto-Indo-European *wen- (“to beat, wound”), the root of wound,^[5][10][3] and Orel likewise links it with the Proto-Germanic word for wound, *wundaz.^[8] Skeat derived it from a stem of Old English winnan (“to toil, suffer”), the source of win.^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

A lump or swelling on the body: Old English medical texts prescribe remedies wið wenne on eágon, against a wen on the eyes.^[7][4] Barnhart dates the word to about 1000.^[12]

Semantic evolution

The general sense of a lump, knot or wart on the body lasted until the 19th century (to 1841 in the OED).^[4] From 1340 to 1599 the word was also used for a spot or stain, by confusion with wem,^[4] and in north Lincolnshire dialect it still meant a blemish or defect.^[13] In the 16th century it was applied to the swelling of goitre (1530), to growths on horses (1559) and on trees (1538, now obsolete);^[4] figurative uses date from 1600, in Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 2.^[4] Johnson (1755) defined it as "a fleshy or callous excrescence, or protuberance".^[14] The narrower medical sense, a sebaceous cyst under the skin, chiefly on the head, dates from the mid-19th century.^[4][15] A large, overcrowded city can be called a wen, especially London as the great wen.^[16]

Timeline

• c. 1000 – Old English wenn, a lump or tumour.^[12][7]
• 1340 – a spot or blemish (obsolete by 1599).^[4]
• 1530 – the swelling of goitre.^[4]
• 1600 – figurative use.^[4]
• 1841 – last record of the general sense of a lump or wart.^[4]
• 1861 – a sebaceous cyst.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. A harmless sebaceous cyst, especially one on the scalp.^[16][3][4]
2. Any abnormal growth that sticks out from a surface; an excrescence.^[3][15]
3. A large, overcrowded city, especially London, called the great wen.^[16]

Word family

• wenny

Related words

• wound
• wem

Usage notes

Merriam-Webster and Klein also record wen as the name of the rune that Old English used for the sound of w, replaced by the letter w after the 13th century;^[3][17] Clark Hall gives the Old English form wenn in that sense as a variant of wynn.^[18] Merriam-Webster also has wen (from 1915) for a copper or bronze coin of the Chinese Republic.^[3]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b c Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
8. ^ a b c Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
9. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
11. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
12. ^ a b Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
13. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
14. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
15. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
16. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
17. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
18. ^ Clark Hall, J. R. (1960), A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, 4th ed., with a supplement by H. D. Meritt, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press