wan
/wɑn/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.80 in modern English
6
Scrabble Score
3
Letters
1
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Pale, sickly-looking.
adj
noun
Pronunciation spelling of one, representing Ireland and Glasgow English.
noun
Example Sentences
- "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."
- "I have read in some old marvellous tale, / Some legend strange and vague, / That a midnight host of spectres pale / Beleaguered the walls of Prague. // Beside the Moldau’s rushing stream, / With the wan moon overhead, / There stood, as in an awful dream, / The army of the dead."
- "Blanche smiled languidly out upon the young men, thinking whether she looked very wan and green under her rose-coloured hood, and whether it was the mirrors at Gaunt House, or the fatigue and fever of her own eyes, which made her fancy herself so pale."
- "BEHIND him lay the gray Azores, / Behind the Gates of Hercules; / Before him not the ghost of shores, / Before him only shoreless seas. // The good mate said: “Now must we pray, / For lo! the very stars are gone. / Brave Admiral, speak, what shall I say?” / “Why, say, ‘Sail on! sail on! and on!’” “My men grow mutinous day by day; / My men grow ghastly wan and weak.” / The stout mate thought of home; a spray / Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek. // “What shall I say, brave Admiral, say, / If we sight naught but seas at dawn?” / “Why, you shall say at break of day, / ‘Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!’” They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow, / Until at last the blanched mate said: / “Why, now not even God would know / Should I and all my men fall dead. // These very winds forget their way, / For God from these dread seas is gone. / Now speak, brave Admiral, speak and say”— / He said: “Sail on! sail on! and on!” They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the mate: / “This mad sea shows his teeth to-night. / He curls his lip, he lies in wait, / With lifted teeth, as if to bite! // Brave Admiral, say but one good word: / What shall we do when hope is gone?” / The words leapt like a leaping sword: / “Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!” Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck, / And peered through darkness. Ah, that night / Of all dark nights! And then a speck— / A light! A light! A light! A light! // It grew, a starlit flag unfurled! / It grew to be Time’s burst of dawn. / He gained a world; he gave that world / Its grandest lesson: “On! sail on!”"
- "She looked wan and worried, and then finally she was not in court one day, and later [...] he learned that she was confined to her room with a bad cold."
- "Big fair wan lovely pale-freckled Kathleen with that buoyant bust gave kindly smiles but mostly she was silent."
Etymology
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”). The meaning and sense has been attributed to influence from Proto-Brythonic, Proto-Celtic *wasnos (cf. Welsh gwan. Irish fann).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /wɑn/
- British English: /wɒn/
Usage
Inflected Forms
Derived Forms
Phrases
Frequently Paired Words
Synonyms
Homonyms
Antonyms
colorful
colorific
coloury
aurora-colored (US) / aurora-coloured
colorful (US) / colourful
discolored [⇒ thesaurus] (US
obsolete) / discoloured
kaleidoscopic
many-coloured
motley
multichromatic
multicolor (US) / multicolour