weerish; see [werish].
weesel, weasand, windpipe. Peele, David, ed. Dyce. p. 465, col. 2. Spelt wizzel, Mayne, City Match, iii. 4 (Quartfield). Cp. Bavarian dial. waisel, the gullet of animals that chew the cud (Schmeller).
wee’st heart, woe is the heart (of me)! Congreve, Love for Love, ii. 1 (Nurse). ‘Wae’s t’ heart,’ ‘Wae’s heart of me,’ are Yorks. exclamations; ‘Wae’s my heart’ is of frequent occurrence in Scottish poetry, see EDD. (s.v. Woe, 2).
weet, wet; ‘Till all the world is weet’, Spenser, F. Q. iv. 9. 33. This is a common pronunc. of ‘wet’ in the north country and E. Anglia (EDD.). ME. weet, wet (Chaucer, C. T. A. 4107). OE. wǣt.
weet, to know, Spenser, F. Q. i. 3. 6. Fairfax, Tasso, v. 86. This is a northern pronunc. of ‘wit’ (to know), see EDD. (s.v. Wit, vb.). ME. wetyn, to know (Prompt. EETS. 545).
wefte, abandoned, avoided, Spenser, F. Q. iii. 4. 36.
weird: in phr. the weird sisters, used of the three witches, as foretelling destiny, Macbeth, iv. 1. 136. The expression is taken from Holinshed’s Chronicle of Scotland; it was used by Gawin Douglas (Virgil, 80, 48) for the Parcae or Fates; ‘Cloto, una de tribus parcis quae finguntur regere vitam hominis, anglice, one of the thre Weyrde systers’, Pynson’s Ortus Vocabulorum (ed. 1509). See Grimm, Teut. Myth. 407. See [werd].
weld, to wield, govern. Spenser, F. Q. ii. 10. 32; vi. 8. 11; Shep. Kal., Oct., 40; to wield, to carry, Kyd, Span. Tragedy, i. 4. 35; to weld oneself, to erect oneself, Phaer, tr. of Aeneid, ii. 699 (L. se tollit). ME. welden, to wield, to control (Chaucer, C. T. D. 271), to move with ease (C. T. D. 1947).
welk, to fade, to grow dim (of the sun in the west). Spenser, F. Q. i. 1. 23; to cause to grow dim, ‘But nowe sadde Winter welked hath the day’, Shep. Kal., Nov., 13. Cp. prov. use of ‘welk’ in the sense of to fade, to wither (used of plants, see EDD., s.v. Welk, vb1). ME. welke, to wither (Chaucer, C. T. D. 277). Cp. G. welken, to wither.