wan
UK /wɒn/ · US /wɑn/ adjective, noun, proper noun
Also a form of win
Forms wanner wannest wans
- adjective Pale, sickly-looking.
- adjective Dim, faint.
- adjective Bland, uninterested. “A wan expression”
- noun The quality of being wan; wanness.
- noun (Ireland) A girl or woman.
- proper noun A surname.
Synonyms
ashen pasty ashen-faced ashy blake blanched bleak bloodless chalky exsanguious ghastly grey livid pale pallid sallow washed out white whey-faced dull wide area network sick
Antonyms
colorful colorific coloury aurora-colored (US) / aurora-coloured colorful (US) / colourful discolored [⇒ thesaurus] (US obsolete) / discoloured kaleidoscopic many-coloured motley multichromatic multicolor (US) / multicolour
Etymology
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”). The meaning and sense has been attributed to influence from Proto-Brythonic, Proto-Celtic *wasnos (cf. Welsh gwan. Irish fann).
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.
An inflected form.
Webster’s 1913
- Won. Chaucer.
- adjective Having a pale or sickly hue; languid of look; pale; pallid.
- noun The quality of being wan; wanness. [R.]
- verb To grow wan; to become pale or sickly in looks. "All his visage wanned." Shak.
Etymology [AS. wann, wonn, wan, won, dark, lurid, livid, perhaps originally, worn out by toil, from winnan to labor, strive. See Win.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “wan”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details