Word.ws English Dictionary

wanse

wanse verb: to wane; waste, waste away; pine; wither.

Verb

wanse (third-person singular simple present wanses, present participle wansing, simple past and past participle wansed)

  1. (Scotland, UK, dialectal, intransitive) To wane; waste, waste away; pine; wither.

Forms of wanse

third-person singular presentwanses
present participlewansing
past participlewansed
pastwansed
alternative formwanze

Origin of wanse

From Middle English wansen (“to decrease, diminish”), from Old English wansian (“to diminish”), from Proto-West Germanic *wansōn, a variant of *wanisōn, from Proto-Germanic *wanisōną (“to lessen”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁weh₂- (“empty”). Cognate with Old Norse vansa (“to do too little, suffer loss”), Old Norse vansi (“lack, want”). More at wane.

Questions about wanse

What does wanse mean?
Wanse means to wane; waste, waste away; pine; wither.
What part of speech is wanse?
Wanse is a verb.
What is the past tense of wanse?
The past tense of wanse is wansed.

Words near wanse in the dictionary

  1. Wanrong
  2. wanrufe
  3. wans
  4. Wansbeck
  5. Wansdyke
  6. wanse
  7. Wansford
  8. Wanshan
  9. Wansley
  10. Wansleys
  11. wanspeed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wanse (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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Cite this entry: “wanse.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wanse. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.