wan

English

Etymology 1

From Middle English wan, wanne (“grey, leaden; pale grey, ashen; blue-black (like a bruise); dim, faint; dark, gloomy”), from Old English wann (“dark, dusky”), from Proto-Germanic *wannaz (“dark, swart”), of uncertain origin. Cognate with Old Frisian wann, wonn (“dark”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /wɒn/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /wɑn/
• (obsolete) IPA^(key): /wæn/
• Rhymes: -ɒn

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

Adjective

wan (comparative wanner, superlative wannest)

1. Pale, sickly-looking.

   Synonyms: ashen, pasty; see also Thesaurus:pallid

   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto VIII”, in The Faerie Queene. , London: [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 42, page 116:

     Whome when his Lady ſaw, to him ſhe ran / With haſty ioy : to ſee him made her glad, / And ſad to view his viſage pale and wan, / Who earſt in flowres of freſhest youth was clad.

   • 1838 October, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Beleaguered City”, in Voices of the Night, Cambridge, Mass.: John Owen, published 1839, →OCLC, stanzas 1–2, page 22:

     I have read in some old marvellous tale, / Some legend strange and vague, / That a midnight host of spectres pale / Beleaguered the walls of Prague. // Beside the Moldau’s rushing stream, / With the wan moon overhead, / There stood, as in an awful dream, / The army of the dead.

   • 1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 46, in The History of Pendennis. , volumes (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, , published 1849–1850, →OCLC:

     Blanche smiled languidly out upon the young men, thinking whether she looked very wan and green under her rose-coloured hood, and whether it was the mirrors at Gaunt House, or the fatigue and fever of her own eyes, which made her fancy herself so pale.

   • 1892, Joaquin Miller, Columbus :

     BEHIND him lay the gray Azores, / Behind the Gates of Hercules; / Before him not the ghost of shores, / Before him only shoreless seas. // The good mate said: “Now must we pray, / For lo! the very stars are gone. / Brave Admiral, speak, what shall I say?” / “Why, say, ‘Sail on! sail on! and on!’”
     “My men grow mutinous day by day; / My men grow ghastly wan and weak.” / The stout mate thought of home; a spray / Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek. // “What shall I say, brave Admiral, say, / If we sight naught but seas at dawn?” / “Why, you shall say at break of day, / ‘Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!’”
     They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow, / Until at last the blanched mate said: / “Why, now not even God would know / Should I and all my men fall dead. // These very winds forget their way, / For God from these dread seas is gone. / Now speak, brave Admiral, speak and say”— / He said: “Sail on! sail on! and on!”
     They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the mate: / “This mad sea shows his teeth to-night. / He curls his lip, he lies in wait, / With lifted teeth, as if to bite! // Brave Admiral, say but one good word: / What shall we do when hope is gone?” / The words leapt like a leaping sword: / “Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!”
     Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck, / And peered through darkness. Ah, that night / Of all dark nights! And then a speck— / A light! A light! A light! A light! // It grew, a starlit flag unfurled! / It grew to be Time’s burst of dawn. / He gained a world; he gave that world / Its grandest lesson: “On! sail on!”

   • 1921 October, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Efficiency Expert”, in All-Story Weekly, New York, N.Y.: Frank A. Munsey Co., →OCLC; republished as “The Trial”, in The Efficiency Expert, : The Floating Press, 2011, →ISBN, page 188:

     She looked wan and worried, and then finally she was not in court one day, and later [...] he learned that she was confined to her room with a bad cold.

   • 1976 September, Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift, New York, N.Y.: Avon Books, →ISBN, page 24:

     Big fair wan lovely pale-freckled Kathleen with that buoyant bust gave kindly smiles but mostly she was silent.

   • 2020, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments, Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, →ISBN, page 45:

     Instead, you wiped off the red lipstick with wadded-up toilet paper and forced a smile, leaving the locker room with a pale, cotton candy-colored lipstick that made you look wan and parched instead.

2. Dim, faint.

   Synonyms: dull, dun, leaden, uncolorful

   Antonyms: colorful, colorific, coloury; see also Thesaurus:multicolored

   • 1909, Robert W[illiam] Service, “The Ballad of One-eyed Mike”, in Ballads of a Cheechako, Toronto, Ont.: William Briggs, →OCLC, stanza 5, page 52:

     ’Twas so far away, that evil day when I prayed the Prince of Gloom / For the savage strength and the sullen length of life to work his doom. / Nor sign nor word had I seen or heard, and it happed so long ago; / My youth was gone and my memory wan, and I willed it even so.

3. Bland, uninterested.

   Synonyms: insipid, lackluster; see also Thesaurus:boring

   A wan expression

   • 1867 July 13, “Lieutenant Castagnac”, in Every Saturday: A Journal of Choice Reading, Selected from Foreign Current Literature, volume IV, number 80, Cambridge, Mass.: Printed at the University Press, Cambridge, by Welch, Bigelow, & Co., for Ticknor and Fields, →OCLC, chapter II, page 35:

     My position in the midst of the general indifference was hard to bear ; my silence weighed upon me like remorse. The sight of Lieutenant Castagnac filled me with indignation, — a sort of insurmountable repulsion: the wan look, the ironical smile of the man, froze my blood.

   • 2013, Carter Dreyfuss, chapter 1, in The Prince of Temple Square: A Murder Mystery, Tucson, Ariz.: Wheatmark, →ISBN, pages 8–9:

     Checking out her brother’s khakis, the gun propped in the corner, Olivia’s hiking boots and her wan expression, she wants to laugh. “Been hunting, I see.” Olivia’s face falls, as expected. Her brother’s obsession with guns and gross little expeditions appall her.

   • 2014, Chris Angus, chapter 12, in Flypaper: A Novel, New York, N.Y.: Yucca Publishing, Skyhorse Publishing, →ISBN:

     “I have to admit, I’ve been tempted a time or two to chuck everything to go live in a place like this [Bogda Peak, China],” he replied. / “What stopped you?” / He gave her a wan look. “Celibacy.”

Derived terms

• wanly
• wanness
• wanthriven

Translations

Noun

wan (uncountable)

1. The quality of being wan; wanness.

   Synonyms: achromatism, decolouration, paleness, pallidity, pallor

   • 1847, Alfred Tennyson, “Part III”, in The Princess: A Medley, London: Edward Moxon, , →OCLC, page 47:

     And while we stood beside the fount, and watch’d / Or seem’d to watch the dancing bubble, approach'd / Melissa, tinged with wan from lack of sleep, / Or sorrow, and glowing round her dewy eyes / The circled Iris of a night of tears ; [...]

Etymology 2

Eye dialect spelling of one. Sense 2 (“girl or woman”) possibly as a result of the phrase your wan as a counterpart to your man.

Noun

wan (plural wans)

1. Pronunciation spelling of one, representing Ireland English.
2. (Ireland) A girl or woman.

   Synonyms: lass, maid; see also Thesaurus:girl, Thesaurus:woman

   • 1993, Elaine Crowley, The Ways Of Women, London: Orion, →ISBN:

     Then I’d tell myself there were plenty of oul wans and oul fellas in work who never got it and that I’d be lucky like them and escape. Only I didn’t. I don’t want to die.

   • 2005, David McWilliams, The Pope’s Children: Ireland’s New Elite, Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, →ISBN; republished as The Pope’s Children: The Irish Economic Triumph and the Rise of Ireland’s New Elite, Chichester, West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons, 2008, →ISBN, page 4:

     Growing up in Dún Laoghaire in the 1980s, I remember all the hard men were sinewy, scrawny lads, hence the local description ‘more meat on a seagull’. The reason was simple: they were undernourished. [...] The young wans, despite a couple of babies, were more or less the same, pinched, flat-chested and drawn.

   • 2015, Kevin Maher, “A Yuletide Bender”, in Last Night on Earth, London: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN:

     He comes streaming out from under the stage, this time a feckin show-stopper, almost literally, because there’s eighty different acrobats above him, [...] for this mad New Year’s show that has no story at all, other than this wan in silky robes who goes out with this fella in silky robes, and they’re from different enemy tribes of lads and wans in silky robes, and when they find out, they have this huge, aerial, acrobatic donnybrook that ends when everyone wraps their silk around each other up in the air, and then lets it all fall down to the ground, where the audience are, to show them how we're all part of one big silky family, and not to be fighting in the future.

Derived terms

• cubewano

Etymology 3

An inflected form.

Verb

wan

1. (obsolete) simple past of win.

References

Anagrams

• NWA, awn, naw

Ainu

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key):

Numeral

wan (Kana spelling ワン)

1. ten

Atong (India)

Etymology

From English one.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /wan/

Numeral

wan (Bengali script ৱান)

1. one

Synonyms

• sa
• rongsa
• eek

References

• van Breugel, Seino. 2015. Atong-English dictionary, second edition. Available online: https://www.academia.edu/487044/Atong_English_Dictionary. Stated in Appendix 2.

Bislama

Etymology

From English one.

Numeral

wan

1. one

Dutch

Pronunciation

• Audio

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɑn

Etymology 1

Ultimately from Latin vannus.

Noun

wan f or m (plural wannen, diminutive wannetje n)

1. winnowing basket

Etymology 2

Verb

wan

1. inflection of wannen:
   1. first-person singular present indicative
   2. imperative

Fanagalo

Etymology

Borrowed from English one.

Numeral

wan

1. one

Gothic

Romanization

wan

1. Romanization of 𐍅𐌰𐌽

Jamaican Creole

Etymology

Derived from English one.

Pronunciation 1

• IPA^(key): /wãn/

Numeral

wan

1. one
   • 2012, Di Jamiekan Nyuu Testiment, Edinburgh: DJB, published 2012, →ISBN, 2:5:

     Kaaz a onggl wan Gad de bout, an Jiizas Krais a di migl man, di onggl wan we kyan bring Gad an piipl tugeda.

     For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,

Pronunciation 2

• IPA^(key): /wã/

Article

wan

1. a, an (indefinite article)
   • 2012, Di Jamiekan Nyuu Testiment, Edinburgh: DJB, published 2012, →ISBN, 4:9:

     So nou, di Samaritan uman se tu Jiizas se, “Yu a wan Juu an mi a wan Samaritan uman. […]

     he Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria? 

Alternative spelling

• wahn

Further reading

• wan at majstro.com

Japanese

Romanization

wan

1. Rōmaji transcription of わん
2. Rōmaji transcription of ワン

Jingpho

Etymology 1

Inherited from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *bʷar ~ *pʷar (“burn; fire; kindle; roast”) (STEDT).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /wan˧˩/

Noun

wan

1. fire
2. lamp; light; lantern

Etymology 2

Borrowed from Mandarin 碗 (wǎn, “bowl”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /wan˧˧/

Noun

wan

1. bowl

Classifier

wan

1. Classifier for the quantity of a bowl: bowlful

References

• Xu, Xijian (徐悉艰), Xiao, Jiacheng (肖家成), Yue, Xiangkun (岳相昆), Dai, Qingxia (戴庆厦) (1983 December) “wan”, in 景汉辞典 [Jingpho-Chinese Dictionary], Kunming: Yunnan Nationalities Publishing House, pages 868-869

Mandarin

Romanization

wan

1. Nonstandard spelling of wān.
2. Nonstandard spelling of wán.
3. Nonstandard spelling of wǎn.
4. Nonstandard spelling of wàn.

Usage notes

• Transcriptions of Mandarin into the Latin script often do not distinguish between the critical tonal differences employed in the Mandarin language, using words such as this one without indication of tone.

Maranao

Verb

wan

1. to fear

References

• A Maranao Dictionary, by Howard P. McKaughan and Batua A. Macaraya

Middle English

Etymology 1

From Old English wann (“dark”), from Proto-Germanic *wannaz, of uncertain origin.

Adjective

wan

1. wan (pallid, sickly)
2. wan (dim, faint)

Alternative forms

• wane, wanne, won, wonne, wone

Descendants

• English: wan
• Scots: wan

References

• “wan, adj.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.

Etymology 2

Noun

wan (uncountable)

1. Alternative form of wane (“deprivation”)

Etymology 3

Adjective

wan

1. Alternative form of wane

Etymology 4

Noun

wan (uncountable)

1. (Northern) Alternative form of vein (“that which is vain”)

Etymology 5

Pronoun

wan

1. Alternative form of whan

Etymology 6

Noun

wan (plural wanes)

1. (Northern, Early Middle English) Alternative form of wone (“dwelling”)

Etymology 7

Noun

wan (uncountable)

1. Alternative form of wane (“woeful state”)

Etymology 8

Noun

wan (plural wanes)

1. Alternative form of wone (“choice”)

Etymology 9

Noun

wan (plural wanes)

1. Alternative form of wayn (“wagon”)

Etymology 10

Verb

wan (third-person singular simple present waneth, present participle wanende, wanynge, first-/third-person singular past indicative and past participle waned)

1. Alternative form of wanen

Etymology 11

Adverb

wan

1. Alternative form of whenne

Conjunction

wan

1. Alternative form of whenne

Etymology 12

Adverb

wan

1. Alternative form of whanne

Conjunction

wan

1. Alternative form of whanne

Etymology 13

Verb

wan

1. Alternative form of wanne: singular simple past of winnen
2. Alternative form of wonnen: plural simple past of winnen

Nigerian Pidgin

Etymology

From English want.

Verb

wan

1. want, want to

Noone

Noun

wan (plural boom)

1. child

References

• R. Blench, Beboid Comparative

North Frisian

Etymology

From Old Frisian winna, which derives from Proto-Germanic *winnaną.

Verb

wan

1. (Föhr-Amrum Dialect) to win

Conjugation

Okinawan

Romanization

wan

1. Rōmaji transcription of わん

Old English

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Alternative forms

• wann

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /wɔn/

Verb

wan

1. third-person singular of winnan

   Grendel wan hwile wið Hroþgar. ― Grendel long fought against Hrothgar. (Beowulf ll. 151-2)

Old Javanese

Etymology

Unknown. (This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /wan/
• Rhymes: -wan

Root

wan

1. This term needs a translation to English. Please help out and add a translation, then remove the text {{rfdef}}.

Alternative forms

• *hwan
• *on

Derived terms

Further reading

• "wan" in P.J. Zoetmulder with the collaboration of S.O. Robson, Old Javanese-English Dictionary. 's-Gravenhage: M. Nijhoff, 1982.

Pipil

Pronunciation

• (standard) IPA^(key): /waŋ/

Noun

-wan

1. with, in relation to

   Shiwi nuwan wan niweli nimetzilwitia ne nukal yankwik

   Come with me and I can show you my new house

Declension

Conjunction

wan

1. and, but

   Shinechmaka yey pula wan chikwasen tumat

   Give me three plantains and six tomatoes

   Nikilwij ma timuitakan yalua wan inte walajsik

   I told her/him to meet yesterday but she/he didn't come

Scots

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /wan/, /wɑn/

Numeral

wan

1. (West Central, Orkney) one

Sranan Tongo

Etymology 1

From English one.

Number

wan

1. one

Etymology 2

Verb

wan

1. Alternative form of wani

Tok Pisin

Etymology

From English one.

Noun

wan

1. The number one.
   • 1989, Buk Baibel long Tok Pisin, Port Moresby: Bible Society of Papua New Guinea, Jenesis 1:5:

     Tulait em i kolim “De,” na tudak em i kolim “Nait.” Nait i go pinis na moning i kamap. Em i de namba wan.

     Naming the light, Day, and the dark, Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

Numeral

wan

1. One. Used with units of measurement and in times: wan aua, wan klok. See also wanpela.

Coordinate terms

Derived terms

• wanbel
• wanblut
• wande
• wanhaus
• wankain
• wanlain
• wanmak
• wanpes
• wanpela
• wanpilai
• wanpisin
• wanples
• wanskul
• wantaim
• wantok
• wantu
• wanwan
• wanwande
• wanwok

Wutunhua

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key):

Etymology 1

From Mandarin 玩 (wán).

Verb

wan

1. to play

Etymology 2

From Mandarin 碗 (wǎn).

Noun

wan

1. bowl

   ngu wan da-pe-lio.

   I broke a bowl.

   (Quoted in Sandman, p. 93)

References

• Erika Sandman (2016) A Grammar of Wutun‎, University of Helsinki (PhD), →ISBN