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Wan

//wɒn// adj, name, noun, verb

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Pale, sickly-looking.

    "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."

  2. 2
    Dim, faint.

    "’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. 3
    Bland, uninterested.

    "A wan expression"

Adjective
  1. 1
    lacking vitality as from weariness or illness or unhappiness wordnet
  2. 2
    abnormally deficient in color as suggesting physical or emotional distress wordnet
  3. 3
    (of light) lacking in intensity or brightness; dim or feeble wordnet
Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A surname.
Noun
  1. 1
    The quality of being wan; wanness. uncountable

    "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 ; [...]"

  2. 2
    Pronunciation spelling of one, representing Ireland and Glasgow English. alt-of, pronunciation-spelling
  3. 3
    Acronym of wide area network. abbreviation, acronym, alt-of

    "Message latency is much more of an issue on a WAN than on a LAN."

  4. 4
    a computer network that spans a wider area than does a local area network wordnet
  5. 5
    A girl or woman. Ireland

    "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."

Verb
  1. 1
    simple past of win. form-of, obsolete, past
  2. 2
    become pale and sickly wordnet

Etymology

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”).

Etymology 2

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”).

Etymology 3

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.

Etymology 4

An inflected form.

See also for "wan"

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