Crossword clues for wench
wench
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Wench \Wench\ (w[e^]nch), n. [OE. wenche, for older wenchel a child, originally, weak, tottering; cf. AS. wencle a maid, a daughter, wencel a pupil, orphan, wincel, winclu, children, offspring, wencel weak, wancol unstable, OHG. wanchol; perhaps akin to E. wink. See Wink.]
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A young woman; a girl; a maiden.
--Shak.Lord and lady, groom and wench.
--Chaucer.That they may send again My most sweet wench, and gifts to boot.
--Chapman.He was received by the daughter of the house, a pretty, buxom, blue-eyed little wench.
--W. Black. -
A low, vicious young woman; a drab; a strumpet.
She shall be called his wench or his leman.
--Chaucer.It is not a digression to talk of bawds in a discourse upon wenches.
--Spectator. A colored woman; a negress. [Archaic, U. S.]
Wench \Wench\ (w[e^]nch), v. i. [imp. & p. p. Wenched (w[e^]ncht); p. pr. & vb. n. Wenching.] To frequent the company of wenches, or women of ill fame.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
late 13c., wenche "girl, young woman," especially if unmarried, also "female infant," shortened from wenchel "child," also in Middle English "girl, maiden," from Old English wencel, probably related to wancol "unsteady, fickle, weak," from Proto-Germanic *wankila- (cognates: Old Norse vakr "child, weak person," Old High German wanchal "fickle"), from PIE *weng- "to bend, curve" (see wink (v.)).\n\nThe wenche is nat dead, but slepith.
[Wyclif, Matt. ix:24, c.1380]
\nIn Middle English occasionally with disparaging suggestion, and secondary sense of "concubine, strumpet" is attested by mid-14c. Also "serving-maid, bondwoman, young woman of a humble class" (late 14c.), a sense retained in the 19c. U.S. South in reference to slave women of any age. In Shakespeare's day a female flax-worker could be a flax-wench, flax-wife, or flax-woman.\n"to associate with common women," 1590s, from wench (n.). Related: Wenched; wencher; wenching.\n
Wiktionary
n. 1 (context archaic English) A young woman, especially a servant. 2 (context archaic English) A promiscuous woman. 3 (context US dated English) A black woman; a negress. vb. (context intransitive English) To frequent prostitutes; to womanize.
WordNet
Usage examples of "wench".
I must admit that to you aforehand, but that is probably due to her being a rejected wench.
He was an Argon, that much she knew from the frenzied whisperings and gawking of the tavern wenches around her.
There was another serving wench, named Astel, and she was a kindhearted young thing.
He could feel sorry for any man tormented and bedeviled by a woman, though he could not see their foolishness in letting themselves be drawn to such ends by a simple wench.
A further note to the riddle of this sphinx was when Tim recently overheard the bohunk Albertsons manager telling his deli wenches to withhold the snack trays if they saw Tiresias at all.
You will waste the fields and the vineyards of the Caphars, you will burn their villages, you will strike down their men with arrows, and lead away their wenches captive.
Heading toward the dark, waiting cesspool where he knew Elminster of Shadowdale and the wench Sharantyr would come .
She sidled along the Cinder Town fences like any little wench returning after a breathless adventure, and nearly collided with poor Coode who was leaning over his front gate and hanging his melancholy on the pegs of the stars.
In the portrait the breast was bare, and as I was remarking that painters did those parts as best they could, the impudent wench seized the opportunity to shew me that the miniature was faithful to nature.
A sour wench, as thrifty as the dasht was liberal, and will no doubt start by letting half of us go and cutting the pay of the rest.
Sevrin was getting deuced little pleasure out of the constant rounds of gambling, drinking, and wenching.
When Ladayna appeared and denied my identity, I thought the wench angered with me again and merely set upon spitefulness which would slightly disaccommodate me.
Seagani tavern wench who was leaning drearily in a doorway and asked the price of a meal and a drink.
With fraudulent hetero cockiness I sank my sword into the waiting wench.
He called out some name, and a tidy-looking lad making his appearance, he told him to get me a wench just as though he were ordering a bottle of champagne.