Wain
name, noun, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A wagon; a four-wheeled cart for hauling loads, usually pulled by horses or oxen. archaic, literary
""The Hay Wain" is a famous painting by John Constable."
- 2 Alternative form of wean. alt-of, alternative
- 3 large open farm wagon wordnet
- 1 To carry. rare, transitive
- 2 Misspelling of wane. alt-of, misspelling
"As the auto industry is waining away, the city is looking for something new. http://www.modeldmedia.com/inthenews/urbanfarm15108.aspx"
- 1 A surname. countable, uncountable
- 2 Ellipsis of Charles' Wain. abbreviation, alt-of, ellipsis
- 3 A village in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. countable, uncountable
Example
More examples"Still as he had been accustomed to swim merely in rivers he only buoyed himself up with difficulty, and his distress was great when fortunately necessity taught him what course he should adopt; he darted forward between two of the cows, grasped a horn of each of them and was then carried along as securely and naturally as if he had been riding in his own wain."
Etymology
From Middle English wayn, from Old English wæġn, from Proto-West Germanic *wagn, from Proto-Germanic *wagnaz, from Proto-Indo-European *woǵʰnos, from *weǵʰ- (“to bring, transport”). Doublet of wagon, borrowed from Middle Dutch. Cognates Cognate with West Frisian wein, Dutch wagen, German Wagen, Danish vogn, Norwegian vogn, Swedish vagn.
From wee one.
Related phrases
More for "wain"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.