Great Wen
Great Wen proper noun: derogatory name for London: the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom.
Proper noun
the Great Wen
- Derogatory name for London: the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom.
- But, what is to be the fate of the great wen of all? The monster, called, by the silly coxcombs of the press, 'the metropolis of the empire?'1830, William Cobbett, Rural Rides
- London is of vital importance to the communications, industry and towns of the south-east Midlands as a whole, though the proximity of 'the Great Wen' may be partly responsible for the fact that no town within it has a population of more than 130,000.1962, C. T. Smith, “The South-East Midlands”, in J. B. Mitchell, editor, Great Britain: Geographical Essays, page 135
Origin of Great Wen
UK 1820s. From great (“very big”) + wen (“a cyst on the skin”). Coined by William Cobbett.
Questions about Great Wen
- What does Great Wen mean?
- Great Wen means derogatory name for London: the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom.
- What part of speech is Great Wen?
- Great Wen is a proper noun.
Words near Great Wen in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: Great Wen (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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