Meaning
In Scottish and Northern Irish English, wean is an informal noun meaning a child, especially a young child.
How it is used
As a noun, wean means child and is distinct from the standard-English verb wean, meaning to stop feeding a baby or young animal on milk. Dictionaries document the child sense in Scotland and Northern Ireland, with especially rich historical Scots evidence and several recorded spelling variants.
Examples
- “The weans were playing outside after school.”
- “She brought the wean along to see the parade.”
- “There were families with weans all along the route.”
Pronunciation
/weɪn/ · wayn
Tone and register
Familiar and everyday. Depending on speaker and setting it can sound affectionate, matter-of-fact, strongly local, or conversational rather than formal.
Visitor guidance
Visitors should listen for the noun pronunciation and context rather than confuse it with the verb wean. The word is regional rather than universal across all Scottish or Irish speakers, and bairn is another well-known Scottish child word with a different distribution.
Cultural context
Wean is a good example of a small everyday family word carrying strong regional identity. Dictionaries of the Scots Language records centuries of Scots examples, while Cambridge independently labels the noun as Scottish and Northern Irish English. Keeping both regions on one canonical page preserves the shared meaning without pretending their local patterns are identical.
Places represented
Open the reviewed place guide for each regional sense carried by this canonical entry.