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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

wan.

Pale, sickly-looking.

3 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

adj/wɒn/Received-Pronunciation/wɑn/General-American/wæn/obsolete

  1. Pale, sickly-looking.

  2. Dim, faint.

  3. Bland, uninterested.

    A wan expression
Where this word comes from

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).

noun/wɒn/Received-Pronunciation/wɑn/General-American/wæn/obsolete

  1. The quality of being wan; wanness.

    uncountable
Where this word comes from

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).

noun

  1. Pronunciation spelling of one, representing Ireland and Glasgow English.

    alt-of · pronunciation-spelling

  2. A girl or woman.

    Ireland
Where this word comes from

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.

verb

  1. simple past of win.

    form-of · obsolete · past
Where this word comes from

An inflected form.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.