- 1斷奶；（引申）讓人逐漸戒掉、慢慢脫離依賴（wean sb off sth）
To wean a baby or a young animal is to move it, slowly, off its mother's milk and onto ordinary food. It is a process, not a moment — a few weeks or months of adding rice, soft fruit, mashed vegetables while the milk feeds get fewer. You wean a baby, and the baby is weaned; in British English people also say a baby is weaned onto solid food, and in American English 'weaned off' is more common. From there English does something useful with it: you can wean a person off anything they depend on. Wean someone off cigarettes, off sleeping pills, off their phone, off government money. The idea carried across is the gentle, gradual part — you do not stop suddenly, you reduce. So the pattern to learn is wean somebody off something, and sometimes wean somebody onto something better. There is also a set phrase, 'weaned on', meaning brought up with something from the very beginning: 'she was weaned on old Hong Kong films'. Note that a completely different word 'wean' exists in Scotland, meaning a small child (from 'wee one') — you would only meet it in Scottish writing.
組成From Old English wenian, meaning 'to accustom, to train, to get someone used to something'. That older sense explains a lot: weaning is training a baby to be used to something new, and only later did the word narrow to milk.
同家族的字
- wontfrom the same Germanic root about being accustomed — 'as was his wont' means 'as he usually did'
- wonean old English word from the same root, meaning custom or habit
原始詞典資料8 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
Weanname
- 1
A locality in the Gunnedah council area and the Narrabri council area, northern New South Wales, Australia.
weanverb詞源 1/ˈwiːn/
- 1
To cease giving breast milk to an offspring; to accustom and reconcile (a child or young animal) to a want or deprivation of mother's milk; to take from the breast or udder.
- The cow has weaned her calf.
- Abraham made a great feast the same day that Isaac was weaned.
- 2
To cease giving breast milk to an offspring; to accustom and reconcile (a child or young animal) to a want or deprivation of mother's milk; to take from the breast or udder.
- His generation was weaned on 1980's music.
- 3
To cease to depend on the mother's milk for nutrition.
- The kittens are finally weaning.
- 4
To cause to quit something to which one is addicted, dependent, or habituated.
- He managed to wean himself off heroin.
- With Marvin getting older ... and walking now ... I thought it was time to start weaning him off of his bottle.
- 5
To cease to depend.
- She is weaning from her addiction to tobacco.
- 6
obsoleteTo raise, to help grow toward maturity
- For they are friends that help to weane my ſtate, Till men and kingdomes help to ſtrengthen it: […]
weannoun詞源 2/ˈwiː(ə)n/
- 1
A young child.
- I, being but a yearling wean.
- And there were darker tales in the countryside, of weans stolen, of lassies misguided, of innocent beasts cruelly tortured, and in one and all there came in the name of the wife of the Skerburnfoot.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。