Wean out

And of course it’s easy to find the usage on the Web. “The rules will change after the first week—must wean out the slackers!” says a comment on an exercise program. “He told me that [the course] Nursing Process I is used to wean out the weak.” “The Government is determined to wean out the culprits.”

Weaning and weeding wouldn’t seem, at first glance, to have a lot in common. To wean means (literally) to remove a suckling mammal from its diet of mother’s milk—whether to mash, grass, kibble, or PB&J. Its source is the Old English verb wenian, “to accustom” (whence also our odd word wont, meaning “habit”: “He ignored the doorbell, as is his wont”). The figurative use of wean—“to detach…from some accustomed object of pursuit or enjoyment,” in the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition—is more recent, but dates back centuries: “Luther was a man weaned from the world” (1670).

But there are no weedy metaphors here. Nor are there any clues to the wean/ weed mystery in the other “weeny” words: Even wean, “a child,” is just Scottish for wee ane, or “little one,” and no relation to wean the verb. Weenie also meant “a young child” (from wee) before it came to mean “a nerd,” with wiener as slang for “penis” making its contribution along the way. Teeny-weeny is an earlier weeny, just wee with an ending to make it rhyme nicely. And ween is an old verb meaning “believe, expect,” as Gilbert and Sullivan fans know: “That junior partnership, I ween, was the only ship I ever had seen.”