wen

Noun

wen (plural wens)

1. A cyst on the skin.
   • 1854, Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Walden:

     When I have met an immigrant tottering under a bundle which contained his all--looking like an enormous wen which had grown out of the nape of his neck--I have pitied him, not because that was his all, but because he had all that to carry.

   • 1973, Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow:

     Creeps, foreigners with tinted, oily skin, wens, sties, cysts, wheezes, bad teeth, limps, staring or—worse—with Strange Faraway Smiles.

   • 1996, David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest, Abacus 2013, p. 4:

     I am debating whether to risk scratching the right side of my jaw, where there is a wen.

Noun

wen (plural wens)

1. a runic letter later replaced by w

Adverb

wen (not comparable)

1. (eye dialect) Alternative spelling of when

Conjunction

wen

1. (eye dialect) Alternative spelling of when

Pronoun

wen

1. (eye dialect) Alternative spelling of when

Noun

wen (uncountable)

1. (eye dialect) Alternative spelling of when

Adverb

wen

1. (archaic) when

   En ik dacht aan den geur harer bloesems, aan het huiveren harer takken, aan den zang harer vogelen; en ik vroeg mij: wen rieken wij die? (V. Someren, 1822)

   And I thought about the scent of her blossoms, at the shuddering of her branches, at the songs of her birds, and I asked myself: when do we smell these?

Conjunction

wen

1. (archaic) when

   Daar heb ik wen de vogels vlogen, heimelik in elk nest geschouwd! (L. De Mont, 1880)

   There have I, when the birds flew, looked privily in each nest!

Verb

wen

1. first-person singular present indicative of wennen
2. imperative of wennen

Usage notes

• English transcriptions of Mandarin speech often fail to distinguish between the critical tonal differences employed in the Mandarin language, using words such as this one without the appropriate indication of tone.

Declension

Descendants

• English: ween