Word
wen
US/ˈwɛn/
UK/wˈɛn/
Definition
n. a small, painless lump or cyst on the skin.
n. a sebaceous cyst or benign tumorous growth on the skin, typically on the scalp or face.
Examples
“The old man had a small wen on his forehead.”
“The doctor examined the wen behind the patient's ear and confirmed it was a harmless cyst.”
“In his nineteenth-century travelogues, William Cobbett famously referred to London as 'the Great Wen', viewing the rapidly expanding metropolis as a parasitic growth upon the English countryside.”
Examples
simple
“The old man had a small wen on his forehead.”
contextual
“The doctor examined the wen behind the patient's ear and confirmed it was a harmless cyst.”
complex
“In his nineteenth-century travelogues, William Cobbett famously referred to London as 'the Great Wen', viewing the rapidly expanding metropolis as a parasitic growth upon the English countryside.”
Usage
Usually refers to a visible, external lump.
Teaching tip
This word is rarely used in modern conversation; students will mostly encounter it in 19th-century literature or historical medical texts.
Etymology
From Middle English wen, wenne, from Old English wenn, wænn (“wen”), from Proto-Germanic *wanjaz. Cognate with Dutch wen (“goiter”), Low German Ween (“wen”), dialectal German Wenne (“wen”), Danish van, væne.
From Old English wynn.
Eye dialect spelling of when.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Synonyms
Scan code
englishreference.com/q/wen