▪ I. wyn, wynn
(wɪn)
Formerly also wen (wɛn).
[a. OE. wyn (also wen) win n.2]
The name of the Old English runic letter {runwyn} (= w) and of the manuscript form of this ({Wyn} ƿ) in Old and early Middle English.
| α c 1300 M{supc}Clean MS. in Mod. Lang. Rev. (1911) VI. 442 Wen . {Wyn}. {Wyn}imman . {Wyn}epman . {Wyn}onie. 1705 Wanley Antiq. Lit. Septentr. Pref. † b 2, Quod a Runicis Thorn and Wen clauditur. 1758 Wise Some Enq. Europe 145 Ð þ, Th or Thorn, and {Wyn} ƿ, W or Wen, are of Northern growth. 1884 E. Einenkel Life St. Kath. 125 The scribe took the wên of his original for a þorn. 1907 J. E. Wells Owl & Nightingale 3 In a number of places thorn is dotted, and so is like wen. |
| β [1892 S. A. Brooke Hist. Early Eng. Lit. II. xxiii. 201 W. was sometimes taken to mean Wyn, joy, and sometimes Wen, hope. 1910 F. Tupper Riddles of Exeter Bk. 234 W always demands the interpretation Wyn, a rendering of the rune sustained by the Anglo Saxon alphabet in the Salzburg MS.] 1912 A. J. Wyatt Old Eng. Riddles p. xxxix, The commoner Anglian runes..ƿ w wynn (joy). 1955 Jrnl. Eng. & Gmc. Philol. LIV. 6 In later Old English fuþorcs, wyn and wen are generally confused, owing to some extent..to the semantic link existing between the two words, although the name of the W-rune was unquestionably wyn. 1965 C. Barber Flux of Lang. vii. 129 The runic symbol ‘wynn’ was used for the Old English w sound. 1978 Norfolk Archaeol. XXXVII. 56, G offers one or two forms hardly explicable except as corruptions of original spellings with wynn for w. |
▪ II. wyn
obs. f. ween v., win v.