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Wean   /win/   Listen
Wean

verb
(past & past part. weaned; pres. part. weaning)
1.
Gradually deprive (infants and young mammals) of mother's milk.  Synonym: ablactate.  "The kitten was weaned and fed by its owner with a bottle"
2.
Detach the affections of.



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"Wean" Quotes from Famous Books



... 'em,' said John, forcing the wrong arm into the wrong sleeve, and winding the tails of the coat round the fugitive's neck. 'Noo, foller me, and when thee get'st ootside door, turn to the right, and they wean't see ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... scarcely to have diminished. "I'm wushing ane harm to ony o' ye, but I maun get speech o' my lord. He's no bairn; he'll be ane-and-twenty the thirtieth o' June: I mind the day weel, for the wife was brought to bed o' her last wean the same day as the countess, and our Dougal's a braw callant the noo, ye ken. Gin the earl has ony wits ava, whilk folk thocht was aye doubtful', he'll hae gotten them by this time. I maun speak wi' himself', unless, as they said, he's ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... commissioned him to paint a series of pictures. Carle Vernet, the father of Horace Vernet, was also an artist. When quite young, he fell violently in love with the daughter of an opulent furnisher. The marriage was impossible, and his friends, to wean him from his love, sent him to Italy, where he studied the art of painting, and took a high prize—but he could not forget the woman he had loved. In his grief he resolved to give himself up to a monastic life, and his letters from ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett

... Letter." I pick out two Americans because to-day our country supports more literary grocers and panders than the rest of the world put together. It isn't the writers' fault altogether. You can't turn a nation from pap in a day any more than you can wean a baby on lobster ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain

... hospitality, which are equally binding on guest as on host. Indolence, which sometimes comes in aid of good impulses as well as bad, favoured these relenting thoughts; the society of M. did still more to wean me from further efforts of satire: and, finally, my Latin poem remained a torso. But upon the whole my guardian had a narrow escape of descending to posterity in a disadvantageous light, had he rolled down ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... and history of the Catholic world. The purity of its rule drew to its shelter from different parts of Europe sad women, whose souls, deprived of human ties, longed for the death in life which they found here in the bosom of God. No other convent was so fitted to wean the heart and teach it that aloofness from the things of this world which the religious life imperatively demands. On the Continent may be found a number of such Houses, nobly planned to meet the wants of their sacred purpose. Some are buried in the depths of solitary valleys; others hang, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... his face against. His principle is repulsion, his nature contradiction: he is made up of mere antipathies, an Ishmaelite indeed without a fellow. He is always playing at hunt-the-slipper in politics. He turns round upon whoever is next him. The way to wean him from any opinion, and make him conceive an intolerable hatred against it, would be to place somebody near him who was perpetually dinning it in his ears. When he is in England he does nothing but abuse the Boroughmongers and laugh at the whole system; when he is in America he grows impatient ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... arms she is impregnable, can make the land to feed her gulf. For the colonies in the Indies, they are yet babes that cannot live without sucking the breasts of their mother cities, but such as I mistake if when they come of age they do not wean themselves; which causes me to wonder at princes that delight to be exhausted in that way. And so much for the principles of power, whether national or provincial, domestic or foreign; being such as are external, and founded ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... specially Catholic, had not stirred a finger to help O'Neill in his war against Elizabeth. But they were put in circulation to prejudice the mind of King James against his Irish Catholic subjects, and to wean him away from the policy of toleration which he was said to favour. Loftus, Archbishop of Dublin, and Jones, Bishop of Meath, hastened to warn the king against a policy of toleration. They threw the whole blame of the late war on the Jesuits and seminary priests, and cast doubts upon the loyalty ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... cried shrilly, the two scraggy muscles of her neck standing out long and thin as she screamed; "ye muckle lump—to strike a defenceless wean!—Dinna greet, my lamb; I'll no let him meddle ye.—Jock Gilmour, how daur ye lift your finger to a wean of mine? But I'll learn ye the better o't! Mr. Gourlay'll gie you the order to travel ere ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown

... this marriage were destined to wean Ali forever from his former turbulent habits and wild adventures. But the family into which he had married afforded violent contrasts and equal elements of good and mischief. If Emineh, his wife, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... should have such punishment and for such a time as will wean his soul from theft, as will atone for his sin. Just so much. You see, to him mercy is a falling short of what is necessary, a leaving of work half done, as if you were to leave a garment half washed. Excess of punishment ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding

... of penitence. 'Was it prudent to say it, Nevil?' she asked. But, as in his politics, he disdained prudence. A monstrous crime had been committed, involving the honour of the family. No subtlety of insinuation, no suggestion, could wean him from the fixed idea that the apology to Dr. Shrapnel must be spoken by his uncle ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... thy company ower lang, Ill-lookin' wean,(1) thoo must be wrang, Thus to cut short my jerkin. I ken thee weel, I knaw thy ways, Thoo's awlus kept back cash an' claes, An' ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman

... Robert Ballantine, lately brought over, With forty things more: now hear what the law says, Whoe'er will not wear them is not the king's lover. Though a printer and Dean, Seditiously mean, Our true Irish hearts from Old England to wean, We'll buy English silks for our wives and our daughters, In spite of his deanship ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... prophet here speaks, but of that only which we have already touched; namely, when God layeth his correction upon his own children, to call them from the venomous breasts of this corrupt world, that they suck not in over great abundance the poison thereof; and he doth, as it were, wean them from their mother's breasts, that they may learn to receive other nourishment. True it is, that this weaning (or speaning, as we term it) from worldly pleasure, is a thing strange to the flesh. And yet it is a thing ...
— The Pulpit Of The Reformation, Nos. 1, 2 and 3. • John Welch, Bishop Latimer and John Knox

... now between his affections and me. He has reproached me for what he terms my insensibility to his perfections, and says I ought to rejoice that he is so easily rendered happy—only imagine this! Rose, you must give me your daughter, to be to me as my own. Her beauty and sweetness will at once wean my husband's love from this boy; and, moreover, children brought up together—do you not see?—that boy will become attached to one of the 'plebeian blood,' and wedding her hereafter, scald to the core the proud heart of his mother, as she has ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... winds complain; Cauld lies the glaur in ilka lane; On draigled hizzie, tautit wean An' drucken lads, In the mirk nicht, the ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson

... expressed in the form of badinage. There were so many young housekeepers that there was much need of teachers. I tried to get the New England women to stop feeding their families on dough—especially hot soda dough—and to substitute well-baked bread as a steady article of diet. In trying to wean them from cake, I told of a time when chaos reigned on earth, long before the days of the mastodons, but even then, New England women were up making cake, and would certainly be found at that business when the last trump sounded. But they bore with my "crotchets" very patiently, and ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm

... thunder might roll at an instant. Indeed, she began to obsess him so that not even the ministrations of his aunt nor the obeisances of that pleasant girl, the name of whose boots was Fairybell, could give him any comfort or wean him from a contemplation which sprawled gloomily between him and his duties to the traffic. If he had not discovered the lowliness of her quality his course might have been simple and straightforward: the issue, in such an event, would have narrowed to every man's poser—whether ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens

... the cottage." All was silent without, only a suppressed laugh was audible, and the fisherman said as he returned: "You must pardon it in her, my honored guest, and perhaps many a naughty trick besides; but she means no harm by it. It is our foster-child, Undine, and she will not wean herself from this childishness, although she has already entered her eighteenth year. But, as I said, at heart she ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque

... soon as they no longer required her assistance. I know not how it was, but gradually a sort of coolness had arisen between Madame Bathurst and me. Whether it was that she was displeased at my refusing her offer to remain with her, or thought proper to wean herself from one who was so soon to quit her, I know not. I did nothing to give offence: I was more quiet and subdued, perhaps, than before, because I had become more reflective; but I could not accuse myself of any fault or error, that ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat

... overrun the land, when the prophetess Martha was regarded as one with the earlier goddess. When Christianity came in, the name of the hostess of Bethany was given to the churches erected where Martha the moon goddess had been venerated before, so as gradually to wean the heathen from their old faith. They came over into the Church, but brought with them their myth of the ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... your brother, Ida," said Mrs. Clifton. "Heaven forbid that I should wean your heart from the friends who have cared so kindly for you! You shall keep all your old friends, and love them as dearly as ever. You will only have one friend ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger

... so, Philip. I thank him for the week—'tis but a short time to wean myself from happiness. I grant you, that were I to tease, to vex, to unman you with my tears, my prayers, or my upbraidings (as some wives would do, Philip), one day would be more than sufficient for such a scene ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat

... bear the turning of our most sacred language into its depolarized equivalents. You have only to look back to Dr. Channing's famous Baltimore discourse and remember the shrieks of blasphemy with which it was greeted, to satisfy yourself on this point. Time, time only, can gradually wean us from our Epeolatry, or word-worship, by spiritualizing our ideas of the thing signified. Man is an idolater or symbol-worshipper by nature, which, of course, is no fault of his; but sooner or later all his local and temporary symbols must be ground to powder, like the golden ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... to wean her from her anodynes, and failed altogether in doing her any good, although many remedies were resorted to, and various modes of treatment adopted. Finally, in sheer despair, I put her to bed, and began your treatment of ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell

... should so like to have the baby with them for a great many weeks! and they would take care of him, and play with him all day long. Their father once more interposed for the child's sake. Hester might go to Brighton, there wean her infant, and return to her husband; so that the little helpless creature might at least be safe. Mr Grey would not conceal that he considered this a positive duty—that the parents would have much to ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... land where once more I should see old Dannebrog, the flag that fell from heaven with victory to the hard-pressed Danes. Literally out of the sky it fell in their sight, the historic fact being apparently that the Christian bishops had put up a job with the Pope to wean the newly converted Danes away from their heathen pirate flag and found their opportunity in one of the crusades the Danes undertook on their own hook into what is now Prussia. The Pope had sent a silken banner with the device of ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... wean a calf at the time of the full moon, it will make less fuss. You mustn't wean it when the sign is in the belly, or it will never grow fat. Pursue the same course with a pig, or it will squeal. ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various

... fain fort fowl mien write mown sole drafts fore bass beat seem steel dun bear there creak bore ball wave chews staid caste maize heel bawl course quire chord chased tide sword mail nun plain pour fate wean hoard berth isle throne vane seize sore slight freeze knave fane reek Rome rye style flea faint peak throw bourn route soar sleight frieze nave reck sere wreak roam wry flee feint pique mite seer idle ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody

... of mob rule in America are over," Golding declares. "It was no easy matter to wean the people of the fallacious idea that a proletariat could manage the ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams

... are trusting in aught save Him, that upon which we are leaning will be snatched away, even though we fall at first into the depths of despairing sorrow. What He makes us suffer now is not to be considered, in view of His purpose to wean us from this world and prepare us for the next. Christ, as we learn from our text, is as inflexible as fate, and does not hesitate to secure the needful faith by remaining away, even though the message of the sisters was an entreaty ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... season, when a decent cheerfulness is the freest form in which the mind or countenance ought to invest themselves." {129a} He argued against the translator of the Bible into Manchu that concessions should not be made to a Chinese way of thought, because it was the object of the Society to wean the Chinese from their own customs and observances, not to encourage them. But the opposite extreme was more congenial to Borrow. He would go to the market place in a remote Spanish village and display his Testaments on the outspread horsecloth, crying: "Peasants, peasants, ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... was fearful that she would join the herd, but in the evening she came back again to her calf. After this he was satisfied, and turned her out every day, and they had no further trouble with her. He would not, however, wean the calf till the winter time, when she was shut up in the yard and fed on hay. He then weaned the calf, which was a cow-calf, and they had no more trouble with the mother. Alice soon learnt to milk her, and she became very tractable and good-tempered. Such was the ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat

... no coquette; nor was she a foolish girl whose head could be turned by a handsome face or pretty compliments, or whose eyes could be dazzled by the glitter of wealth and rank. She was wedded to her music, and no lover, she vowed, should wean her from her allegiance. It was thus a shock to the world of pleasure-seekers at Bath to learn that the beauty, who had turned a cold shoulder to so many high-placed gallants, had promised her hand to an elderly, unattractive ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... expelled; for the author of "England to her three Daughters" in "Polimanteia," 1595, speaking of Harvey and Nash, and the pending quarrel between them, uses these terms: "Cambridge make thy two children friends: thou hast been unkind to the one to wean him before his time, and too fond upon the other to keep him so long without preferment: the one is ancient and of much reading; the other is young, but full of wit."[4] The cause of his disgrace is reported to have been the share he took in a piece called "Terminus ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... seem as if motherhood were a lovely artifice of the great Father, to wean the heart from selfishness by a peaceful and gradual process. The babe is self in another form. It is so interwoven and identified with the mother's life, that she passes by almost insensible gradations from herself to it; and day by day the distinctive love of self wanes as the child-love ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... range, and contains but a few books, mostly concerning social problems and physiological laws. The Swedish brother, who had been a student, said in answer to my question, that it did not take him long to wean himself from the habit of books; and that now, when he felt a temptation in that direction, he knew he must examine himself, because he felt there was something wrong about him, dragging him down from his higher spiritual estate. He did not regret ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff

... hallowed scene. Should signs of mortal feud be found; Why seek with such vain gauds to wean Our thoughts from holier relics 'round? More fitting emblems here abound Of glory's bright, unfading wreath;— Conquests, with purer triumphs crowned;— Proud victories over ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various

... continued from the mean would in some cases be dangerous, as likely to develop the opposite vice. Thus it is comparatively safe to indulge in extravagance as a cure for niggardliness; the reverse process must be used with caution. Care should likewise be taken in trying to wean a person away from a habit of insensibility to pleasure by means of a rgime of indulgence. If it is not discontinued in time, he may become a pleasure seeker, which is even ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik

... variation known to be within the control of man. For illustration of its effect, let us suppose two pairs of twin calves, as nearly alike as possible, and let a male and a female from each pair be suckled by their mothers until they wean themselves, and be fed always after with plenty of the most nourishing food; and the others to be fed with skimmed milk, hay tea and gruel at first, to be put to grass at two months old, and subsequently ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale

... proved provoking, especially as what could be detected of the tunes, in the snatches heard, indicated to her father's enraged feelings a stubborn attachment to that people from whom he was trying to wean her; so even this little comfort was sternly denied her; and, while strength was gradually giving way under her heavy burdens, she was compelled to toil on in silence. Under all these sore trials not only her angry father but the evil one ...
— Elizabeth: The Disinherited Daugheter • E. Ben Ez-er

... charmed and mystic number, which, if it be broken in these young days,—as, alas, it may be!—will only yield a cherub angel to float over you, and to float over them,—to wean you, and to wean them, from this world, where all joys do perish, to that seraph world ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell

... conceits that flutter round the curly heads of children, but also for the legend, the folk song, the tales of the world of marvel and mystery. The sense of the marvellous is in the child the first form of that sense of the infinite without which a man is like a bird deprived of wings. Let us not wean the child from it, but let us guard in him the faculty of rising above what is earthy, so that he may appreciate later on those pure and moving symbols of vanished ages wherein human truth has found forms of expression that our arid logic ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner

... her. She ardently desired to have a "bodily sight" of her Lord upon the Cross, "like other that were Christ's lovers"; and she prayed that she might have "a grievous sickness almost unto death," to wean her from the world and quicken her spiritual sense. The sickness came, and the vision; for they thought her dying, and held the crucifix before her, till the figure on the Cross changed into the semblance of the ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... child was wean'd, and brought To wait upon the Lord; Young Timothy betimes was taught To know his ...
— Divine Songs • Isaac Watts

... suppressed his thoughts. He could not help remarking, however, "With the Intendant at Beaumanoir! I could have wished Le Gardeur in better company! No good can come of his intimacy with Bigot; Amelie, you must wean him from it. He should have been in the city to receive you and the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... no calving in the case," said one of the women, "but a poor fatherless wean dying; so come awa' wi' you, for our trust is constant in you, as Bruce said to Donald of ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... "She's nursin' a wean, Mr. Henry!" Logan replied, winking heavily. "We've a couple already, an' there'll be another afore long. She's as punctual as the clock, Sheila. She's a great woman for fine, ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... the city. Nor was his mother sorry that he should go. She had patiently submitted to the fact of his betrothal to Vittoria, which was his safeguard in similar perils; and she rather hoped for Violetta to wean him from his extreme republicanism. By arguments? By influence, perhaps. Carlo's republicanism was preternatural in her sight, and she presumed that Violetta would talk to him discreetly and persuasively of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... on letters from Beechhurst were fewer and farther between; letters from Brook she had none, nor any mention of Harry Musgrave in her mother's. Her grandfather desired to wean her from early associations, and a mixture of pride and right feeling kept the Carnegies from whatever could be misconstrued into a wish to thwart him. No one came to see her from the Forest after that rash escapade of Harry Musgrave's. ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... to fly or the bird to swim, or the blind mole to live above the cool sof' earth in which centuries of ancestral moles have delighted to burrow? Then no mo' can you teach a woman in whom the love of country is pa'amount to love anothah country. Only by the gentlest measuahs may you wean her from it. Only by givin' her in this strange new country something mo' beautiful than any othah thing she has evah known. And that," he finished, "is why I am goin' to ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris

... our school, and he couldn't learn fast enough; when he had finished I sent him East to college, and, in order to wean him utterly away from the past, instead of sending him to an Indian school I arranged for him to enter one of the big Eastern universities, where no Indian had ever been, where constant association with the flower of our race would by its own force raise him to a higher level. ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... what I conceived to be my duty, Mr. Irvin," she said. "And, bad as the truth may be, it is better than doubt, after all. You must look after yourself, you know. When Rita comes back we shall have a big task before us to wean her from her old habits." She met his glance frankly. "But ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer

... the mournful sound Of unseen waters falling round; The dry leaves, quivering o'er my head, Like man, unquiet even when dead! These, ay, these shall wean My soul from life's deluding scene, And turn each thought, o'ercharged with gloom, Like willows, downward ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... mentions a person who usually drank twelve drams a day; but being convinced of his approaching misery, took the resolution to wean himself from this poison. He always drank out of one glass, into which he daily let fall a drop of sealing-wax. By this means he had twelve drops less of spirit every day, till at length, his glass being filled with wax, his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various

... signs of Italian inspiration, derived particularly from Guarini and his Pastor Fido, models not wholly commendable at a time when Maffei's Merope was exerting wholesome influence upon the Italian drama in the direction of simplicity and dignity. Nothing, however, could wean Luzzatto from adherence to Spanish-Italian romanticism. His happiest creation is the dramatic parable, Layesharim Tehillah ("Praise unto the Righteous!"). The poetry of the Bible here celebrates its resurrection. ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... auld days. It was aye washin's clappin' aboon the stanes. Noo, mony o' the mithers hang the claes oot at nicht. Ilka thing is changed sin' I was a wean an' leevin' i' the auld Guildhall, the bairnies haen Bobby to lo'e, an' no' to be neglectet." She continued the conversation to include Tammy as he came around the ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson

... a Door of Refuge ope To wean my footsteps from the facile Slope, And write me down, fulfilled of Self-esteem, A Prop and Pillar of ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)

... man saw that on the green Leaves of his opening ... a blight had lighted 230 He said: 'My friend, one grief alone can wean ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... Thou's welcome, wean; mishanter fa' me, If thoughts o' thee, or yet thy mamie, Shall ever daunton me or awe me, My bonie lady, Or if I blush when thou shalt ca' me Tyta ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... exercise of a parental vigilance over their interests, protecting them against fraud and intrusion, and at the same time using every proper expedient to introduce among them the arts of civilized life, we may fondly hope not only to wean them from their love of war, but to inspire them with a love for peace and all its avocations. With several of the tribes great progress in civilizing them has already been made. The schoolmaster and the missionary are found ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Tyler • John Tyler

... shiftless and lazy, but he had a code of honor. Bill could have blackmailed many a careless man of prominence, had he been so minded. But a man who had once dined a governor of the state could do no wrong. His main fault was that he had neglected to wean his former greatness; he still nursed it. Thus, it was beneath his dignity to accept a position as a clerk in a store or shop. The fact that his pristine glory was somewhat dimmed to the eyes of his fellow citizens in no wise ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath

... an important part in the Easter festival, which always lasts several days. They paint their faces hideously, tog themselves up with feathers on their sombreros, and carry wooden swords painted with red figures. Such ceremonies were a clever device of the Jesuits and Franciscan missionaries to wean the Indians from their native feasts by offering them something equally attractive in the new religion they were teaching. The feasts are still observed, while ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz

... overcome it very readily. He believed he was gaining ground since he was able to reduce the amount of morphia taken, but in order to keep up he had to employ the stimulant more frequently. By this method he hoped never so to lose self-control as to excite suspicion, and also gradually to wean himself from the drug altogether. Of the two he would rather meet Mildred than his wife; the latter must be kept in ignorance, since to destroy her absolute trust was to be destroyed. Mildred would more quickly suspect his fault than would her ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... and have forsaken me in these troubles, {you} for whose sake I am in extreme disgrace, and have been disobedient to my father; on whose account I am now ashamed and grieved, that he who used to lecture me about the manners of these women, advised me in vain, and was not able to wean me away from her:— which, however, I shall now do; {whereas} when it might have been advantageous to me {to do so}, I was unwilling. There is no being more wretched ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence

... at this period, if well it were for me to live at all, that from any continued contemplation of my misery I was forced to wean myself, and suddenly to assume the harness of life. Else under the morbid languishing of grief, and of what the Romans called desiderium, (the yearning too obstinate after one irrecoverable face,) too probably ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... of ages to wean men and nations from popular illusions, and the deep-rooted opinions transmitted from sire to son: it cannot therefore surprise us, that even when the intellectual energy of Greece was signalizing itself by efforts ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... he remembers Lizzie Maurice and the smart of Harry Oaklands' horsewhip. And now, having warned you, your fate is under your own control. For what is past I do not reproach you; you have been an instrument in the hands of Providence to wean my affections from this world, and if it is His good pleasure that, instead of a field for high enterprise and honest exertion, I should henceforth learn to regard it as a scene of broken faith and crushed hopes, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... learn of thee, Give me true simplicity; Wean my soul, and keep it low, Willing thee ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams

... novelettes about the child-man, and living their own lives. I've been an unmarried man and I know all about it. Every intelligent woman now seems to want to live her own life when she is not engaged in taking the child-man out into polite society, and trying to wean him from alcohol and tobacco. However, this scarcely ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells

... first, called The Baptist, was printed last, and next the Medea of Euripides. He wrote them in compliance with the custom of the school, which was to have a play written once a-year, that the acting of them might wean the French youth from allegories, to which they had taken a false taste, and bring them back, as much as possible, to a just imitation of the ancients. This affair succeeding even almost beyond his hopes, he took more pains in compiling the other two tragedies, called Jephtha and Alcestes, ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... for the first time. The old Lapp and his boy, a strapping fellow of fifteen, with a ruddy, olive complexion and almost Chinese features, caught a number of the cows with lassos, and proceeded to wean the young deer by anointing the mothers' dugs with cow-dung, which they carried in pails slung over their shoulders. In this delightful occupation we left ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor

... wean't," said Bruff, with a grin. "Look here, Mester Vane, I've sin too many of your contraptions not to know better. You're going to have the greenhouse pulled all to pieces, and the wall half knocked down to try your bits o' tricks, and less than a month they'll all have to be pulled ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn

... during that brief interval. At first it wore a look almost of repugnance as she regarded the unconscious child, and then that very unconsciousness seemed to awaken her womanly compassion. "Puir hapless wean, ye little ken what ye're coming to! Lack o' kinsman's love, and lack o' siller, and lack o' beauty. God forgie me—but why did He send ye into the waefu' warld ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)

... in sickness and in health,—conversation, sometimes innocently trivial, and at others profitably serious;—books read and commented on, together; meals ate, and walks taken, together,—and conferences, how we may best do good to this poor person or that, and wean our spirits from the world's cares, without divesting ourselves of its charities. What a picture I have drawn, Maria! and none of all these things may ever ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... unscrupulous. He would fain win her by gentle and fair means, even by wedlock. That chaplet of seven stars is his bridal offering. Why should not she accept it? Why should she be coy of his desire? It is true that he drinks. But in time, may be, a wife might be able to wean him from the wine-skin, and from the low company he affects. That will be for time to show. And, meanwhile, how brilliant a match! Not even Pasiphae, her mother, ever contemplated for her such splendour. In her great love, Ariadne risked her whole ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... was wrong in my conception of justice on this question, I hope I shall have the courage immediately to retrace my steps. But by helping the Mahomedans of India at a critical moment in their history, I want to buy their friendship. Moreover, if I can carry the Mahomedans with me I hope to wean Great Britain from the downward path along which the Prime Minister seems to me to be taking her. I hope also to show to India and the Empire at large that given a certain amount of capacity for self-sacrifice, justice can be secured by peacefullest ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi

... Pipi! Would draw Jove's eagle from his throne; Yes, Venus' turtle doves, I wean, And the vain peacock e'en, Would come, I swear, Soon as that tone had ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe

... he for the state, that it should wean Well-tutored counselors to do their part Full profit and prosperity to glean With dignity, although with contrite heart And wisdom that Tradition wisdom ranks, That church and state might ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... know," said Emily, blushing; for in those days in which it had been sought to wean her from George Hotspur, a word or two about this lady had been said to her by Lady Elizabeth under the instructions of Sir Harry. And there was no more said on that occasion. On that day, and on the following, her father observed no change in her; and the mother ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope

... gifts of God are productive of such evil consequences, why are they given? God gives them, in the fulness of His goodness, in order to draw the soul from sin, from attachment to the creature, and to bring it back to Himself. But these same gifts with which He gratifies it—that He may wean it from earth and from self to love Him, at least from gratitude—we use to excite our self-love and self-admiration, to amuse ourselves with them; and self-love is so deeply rooted in man, that it is augmented by these gifts; for he finds ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon

... womanhood had long ago attained, And soon must wed one worthy of her race, Nought heeded when alternate to her view Were brought the prowess of the neighbouring king, The wisdom of the pilot of the state. To wean her love from noble Timmaraj, He forth was sent against his country's foes, With his small band to fall, and ne'er return. But oft as he was sent, as often he Returned victorious with fresh laurels gained. And when the bards before the king and queen Recited ...
— Tales of Ind - And Other Poems • T. Ramakrishna

... alone restrained me; it was that I did not dare to fix my eyes upon certain objects. I feared the fire and brilliant significance of my looks at that moment so appreciated by everybody: and the more I saw I attracted attention, the more anxious was I to wean curiosity by my discreetness. I cast, nevertheless, a glittering glance upon the Chief-President and his friends, for the examination of whom I was admirably placed. I carried my looks over all the Parliament, and saw there an astonishment, a silence, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... both asunder. It is evident to me that Charles's letter (which Emily showed to me with a melancholy face) was on principle less warm, less dottable with stars, and more conversant with things of this world; high, firm, honourable principle; intending very gently, very gradually, to wean her from him, if he could; for his faith in Jeanie Mackie had been shaken, and—but let us hear him tell ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... she was wean'd,—I never shall forget it,— Of all the days of the year, upon that day: For I had then laid wormwood to my dug. . . . . . . —but, as I said, When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple Of my dug, and felt it bitter, pretty fool, To see it tetchy, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 194, July 16, 1853 • Various

... people and struggled up from some humble position. A life of toil may seem to be hard, but it conforms to nature and natural laws and favors the development of the best that is in man; and he who shirks toil misses his opportunity. Whatever tends to wean men from work only weakens them. Luxury and indolence travel on the downward road of degeneracy. They may make pleasant temporary indulgence, but are fatal to ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk

... gleaned that the commander at Kharkov would distribute them among the various military camps throughout the province, where constant hard labor, a stern discipline and a not too humane treatment would eventually toughen their physical fibre and wean them from the ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith

... sex-differences asserting themselves. Pee-Wee is a bit of a stoic, while his sister shows a tendency to prove a bit of a squealer. But Poppsy is much the daintier feeder of the two. I'll probably have to wean them both, however, before many more weeks slip by. As soon as we get settled in our new shack and I can be sure of a one-cow supply of milk I'll begin a bottle-feed once in every twenty-four hours. Dinky-Dunk says I ought to take a ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... last I too returned to London I was privileged to take my humble share in the "tumbling," as also in the steady process that was gradually to wean us from Bohemia. We tumbled pretty regularly into the Pamphilon, a restaurant within a stone's throw of Oxford Circus, of the familiar type that exhibits outside its door a bill of fare with prices appended, to be studied ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles

... shall tell: O! be the cup of joy to thee consign'd, Of joy unmix'd, without a dreg behind! For no rough monitor thy soul requires, To check the frenzy of too rash desires; No poignant grief, to prove its latent worth, No pain to wean it from the toys of earth; Thy soul untroubled can alike survey This gloomy world, and Heaven's immortal day: Then while the current of thy blood shall flow, While Heaven yet lends thee to thy friends below; Round thee may pleasure spread ...
— Poems on Serious and Sacred Subjects - Printed only as Private Tokens of Regard, for the Particular - Friends of the Author • William Hayley

... unpleasantness of such a meeting as her mother had wished for, perhaps startled Faith to a fresh sense of what she had to do in the premises. She resolved to be as grave and cool as it was possible to be, in Dr. Harrison's presence. She would keep him at such a distance as should wean him from any thoughts of her. Faith tried faithfully to do what she had purposed. But it was very difficult to keep at a distance a person who did not pretend to be near, or only pretended it in a line where he could not be repulsed. He must see her every ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner

... LOVER.—Do not flatter yourselves, young women, that you can wean even an occasional wine drinker from his cups by love and persuasion. Ardent spirit at first, kindles up the fires of love into the fierce flames at burning licentiousness, which burn out every element ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... for him our prayers have won, My song shall echo, "Hail, all hail, Auspicious Sun!" There as you move, "Ho! Triumph, ho! Great Triumph!" once and yet again All Rome shall cry, and spices strow Before your train. Ten bulls, ten kine, your debt discharge: A calf new-wean'd from parent cow, Battening on pastures rich and large, Shall quit my vow. Like moon just dawning on the night The crescent honours of his head; One dapple spot of snowy white, The ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace

... between us The mountains or the sea, No time shall ever wean us, No distance set us free; But around the yearly board, When the flaming pledge is poured, It shall claim every name On ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... "Well, we'll have to wean him now," the old doctor said, looking the unresponsive mother over sharply. "It won't do to try any experiments with him. Your milk may be all right now, but he wouldn't stand ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger

... friend. I could find it in my heart to pity him for loving you. Indeed, it has been in friendship that I have tried to interest him in a great national question—to wean him from his darling sin. But were you my wife he should never cross our threshold. The day that made us one should make you and Fareham strangers. It is for you to choose, Angela, between two men who love you—one near your own age, free, God-fearing; the other nearly ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... sighed, and then attempted to console herself and her lord by remarking that, after all, the thing was not accomplished yet. Now that Eleanor was at Plumstead, much might be done to wean her from her fatal ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... to like the suggestion, and remained. What was said and what was done on that walk never could be clearly recollected by Shadrach; but in some way or other Joanna contrived to wean him away from her gentler and younger rival. From that week onwards, Jolliffe was seen more and more in the wake of Joanna Phippard and less in the company of Emily; and it was soon rumoured about the quay that old Jolliffe's son, who had come ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy

... constitutions of England, and to do equal justice by rich and poor. But the wicked kings of Israel were trying to break through that law, and make themselves tyrants and despots, such as the Czar of Russia is now. First, Jeroboam began by trying to wean his people from Moses' law, by preventing their going up to worship at Jerusalem, and making them worship instead the golden calves at Dan and at Bethel. For he knew that if he could make idolaters of them, he should soon make slaves of them; and ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley

... way. Indeed, to the wise heads of those days, the pursuit of natural science seemed so much waste of good time which might otherwise be devoted to logic or rhetoric or some other branch of study more in vogue at that time. To assist in this attempt to wean Tycho from his scientific tastes, his uncle chose as a tutor to accompany him an intelligent and upright young man named Vedel, who was four years senior to his pupil, and accordingly, in 1562, we find the pair taking up their abode ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball

... Frances, I'll maintain you gallantly. I'll bring you to Court, wean you among the fair society of ladies, poor Kinswomen of mine, in cloth of silver: beside, you shall have your Monkey, your Parrot, your Muskrat, and your ...
— The Puritain Widow • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]

... that the first chief of the Rising family, who obtained that country as an appanage, may have been of illegitimate birth, and that, his mother being impure, he may have been brought up in a hankering after the flesh-pots, from which it has been impossible to wean his descendants. ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton

... sae mony hundred years, and never hunds puir fowk aff your grund as if they were mad tykes, nane o' our fowk wad stir your gear if ye had as mony capons as there's leaves on the trysting-tree. And now some o' ye maun lay down your watch, and tell me the very minute o' the hour the wean's born, an ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... did Ranild take, He was I wean a lying cheat; I tell to ye, for a verity, He only ...
— Marsk Stig - a ballad - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise

... could give my soul delight. Oh that my youth had thus employ'd my pen! 113 Or that I now could write as well as then! But 'tis of grace, if sickness, age, and pain, Are felt as throes, when we are born again; Timely they come to wean us from this earth, As pangs that ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham

... of combating them directly, which would only serve to augment them, and to wean us from God, with whom alone we ought to be occupied, we should simply turn away from them, and draw nearer to God; as a little child, seeing a fierce animal approaching it, would not stay to fight it, nor even to look at it, but would run for shelter to its mother's arms, ...
— A Short Method Of Prayer And Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon

... Jack, raising both hands and grinning excitedly, "wut tale dis? I bin yerry da tale wun I is bin wean't ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris

... passionate caresses. The torments inflicted on her by my great-aunt, the sight of my grandmother's vain entreaties, of her in her weakness conquered before she began, but still making the futile endeavour to wean my grandfather from his liqueur-glass—all these were things of the sort to which, in later years, one can grow so well accustomed as to smile at them, to take the tormentor's side with a. happy determination which deludes one into the belief that it is not, really, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... bethought himself that any pledge given for a whole life-time must be foolish; and he bethought himself also that if he could wean his heir from rats for a year or so, the taste would perish from lack of nourishment. "I will say for two years," said Sir Peregrine, still maintaining ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... the secret that Mr. Hawkins, the elder children, Col. Sellers and herself had kept so long and so faithfully; and she cried and said that now that troubles had begun they would never end; her daughter's love would wean itself away from her and her heart would break. Her grief so wrought upon Laura that the girl almost forgot her own troubles for the moment in her compassion for her mother's distress. ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... actor; but he kept his station, calm and secure as his own native island set in the stormy seas, until anger gradually subsided through very weariness; and every effort having been ineffectually used to wean "the tyrant" from his purpose, the political antipathies of the audience began to yield to their theatrical taste; and, after much argument and delay, the unpalatable demand was reluctantly assented to. Cooke, however, whose nature it was, when opposed, only to become ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 268, August 11, 1827 • Various

... my young days of passion—joy, or pain— Perchance my heart and harp have lost a string— And both may jar: it may be, that in vain I would essay as I have sung to sing[gj]: Yet, though a dreary strain, to this I cling; So that it wean me from the weary dream Of selfish grief or gladness—so it fling Forgetfulness around me—it shall seem To me, though to none else, a ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron



Words linked to "Wean" :   estrange, suck, nurse, alienate, deprive, lactate, suckle, give suck, disaffect, alien, breastfeed, wet-nurse



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