Weasand
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The oesophagus; the gullet. dialectal
"By Heaven, and all saints in it, better food hath not passed my weasand for three livelong days, and by God’s providence it is that I am now here to tell it."
- 2 The throat or windpipe. dialectal
"[…] Or cut his vvezand vvith thy knife."
Example
More examples"By Heaven, and all saints in it, better food hath not passed my weasand for three livelong days, and by God’s providence it is that I am now here to tell it."
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English wesand, wesande, wesaunt, from Old English *wǣsend, wāsend (“weasand, windpipe, gullet”), from Proto-West Germanic *waisund, *waisundu (“windpipe, gullet”), from Proto-Indo-European *weys- (“to flow, run”). Cognate with Old Frisian wāsande (“weasand”), Old Saxon wāsendi, Old High German weisant (“windpipe”), Middle High German weisant (“windpipe”), Bavarian Waisel, Wasel, Wasling (“the gullet of ruminating animals”), Alemannic German Weisel (“esophagus (of an animal)”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.