weasand

English

Alternative forms

• weazand
• wassin, wezzen, wizen, wizzen, wosen (dialectal)
• wesan, wessand, wezand, wezon (obsolete)

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English wesand, wesande, wesaunt, from Old English *wǣsend, wāsend (“weasand, windpipe, gullet”), from Proto-West Germanic *waisund, *waisundu (“windpipe, gullet”), from Proto-Indo-European *weys- (“to flow, run”). Cognate with Old Frisian wāsande (“weasand”), Old Saxon wāsendi, Old High German weisant (“windpipe”), Middle High German weisant (“windpipe”), Bavarian Waisel, Wasel, Wasling (“the gullet of ruminating animals”), Alemannic German Weisel (“esophagus (of an animal)”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈwiːzənd/
• Rhymes: -iːzənd

Noun

weasand (plural weasands) (now dialectal)

1. The oesophagus; the gullet.
   • 1820, Walter Scott, chapter 42, in Ivanhoe‎^[1]:

     “By Heaven, and all saints in it, better food hath not passed my weasand for three livelong days, and by God’s providence it is that I am now here to tell it.”

2. The throat or windpipe.
   • 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii], page 12:

     Caliban: […] Or cut his wezand with thy knife.

   • 1820, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Oedipus Tyrannus; Or, Swellfoot The Tyrant: A Tragedy in Two Acts:

     Rat.
     I’ll slily seize and
     Let blood from her weasand,—
     Creeping through crevice, and chink, and cranny,
     With my snaky tail, and my sides so scranny.

   • 1890, Knut Hamsen, Sult (Hunger), Part Four, at p.181 (Canongate Books Ltd. 2016 paperback edition), Sverre Lyngstad translation:

     They're both so engrossed in this that they don't notice my landlady, who comes rushing out to learn what's going on.
     "Why," her son explains, "he grabbed me by the weasand, it took me a long time to get my wind back."

   • 1964, Anthony Burgess, Nothing Like the Sun: A Story of Shakespeare's Love Life:

     ‘Which fellows?’ Very loud now, but a tightening in her weasand.

Translations

the oesophagus — see oesophagus,‎ gullet

the throat or windpipe — see throat,‎ windpipe,‎ trachea

Anagrams

• Sandawe