▪ I. wee, n.1 and a. orig. Sc.
(wiː)
Forms: 4 wei, wey(e, 4–6 we, 6–9 wie, 7 wea, 8 wi, 6– wee.
[Northern ME. wei, repr. earlier Anglian wéᵹ, wéᵹe = WS. wǽᵹ, wǽᵹe (see weigh n.); the later we, wee shows the normal loss of the final palatal spirant which is still indicated in all the rhymes of the earliest texts.
In the n. the original sense of ‘quantity’, ‘amount’, is very slightly recorded, the word being mainly used (almost always with little) as a measure of time or space. In adjectival use, however, the idea of quantity or size has been retained; this use evidently originated in the Sc. idiom exemplified by bit n.2 9 (a bit thing = ‘a bit of a thing’, ‘a little thing’); cf. wee bit in B. c below. It is however remarkable that, although found as early as the 15th c., the adj. is rare in Sc. writers before 1721, though our quots. from Shakespeare and Heywood show that it had become known to Englishmen early in the 17th c. The word (both n. and adj.) is current in the dialects of some English counties (see Eng. Dial. Dict.), but there is no evidence to show that it was commonly used in England before the 19th c.; see however way-bit.]
A. n. In early use almost always a little wee, later also a wee: = ‘a little’, ‘a (little) bit’; in various applications (chiefly as adverbial accusative).
† 1. a. A little or young thing; a child. Obs.
| a 1300 Cursor M. 8419 He ne es yitt bot a littel wei, Þow do him for to foster slei. |
b. A small quantity.
| c 1375 Sc. Leg. Saints xix. (Christopher) 605 Þe kinge tuk þan a lytil we of þe fresche blude, & vet his ee. |
c. To a small extent, in a small degree.
| 1513 Douglas æneis i. ix. 61 The quene Dido, astonist a litle wie [1710, we] At the first sycht. 1720 Ramsay Rise & Fall of Stocks 85 It lulls a wee my Mullygrubs, To think upon these bitten Scrubs. 1793 Regal Rambler or Devil in London 69 Dinna be angry,..I have been drinking a wi, and I believe the Devil was in me. |
d. Qualifying an adj. or adv.: Somewhat, rather.
| 1816 Scott Old Mort. xxxvii, His brain was a wee ajee, but he was a braw preacher for a' that. 1818 ― Br. Lamm. xxv, I thought it right to look a wee strange upon it at first. 1818 ― Hrt. Midl. li, ‘Are you sure you know the way?’..‘I maybe kend it a wee better fifteen years syne.’ |
2. A short time.
| a 1300 Cursor M. 11665 Quen sco had sitten þar a wei [Gött. wey] Sco bihild a tre was hei. Ibid. 12531 [James, stung by an adder] Bolnand in a litel wei, þat al-mast bigan he to dei. c 1375 Sc. Leg. Saints xvi. (Magdalene) 449 Quhene he..wist þat in a lytil we for falt of met þe barne suld de. 1375 Barbour Bruce vii. 182 The Kyng than vynkit a litill we. c 1500 Priests of Peblis 817 Ane lytill wie befoir the feist of Ȝule. 1535 Stewart Cron. Scot. (Rolls) I. 183 Now will I leif of this ane lytill we. Ibid. II. 139 So at the last the cloude ane lytill we Discouerit wes, that tha micht better se. c 1560 Rolland Seven Sages 154 Scho was wyteles a lytill we. 1592 Montgomerie Misc. Poems lvi. 2 Stay, passinger, thy mynd, thy futt, thy ee: Vouchsaif, a we, his epitaph to vieu, Quha [etc.]. a 1700 Gaberlunzie-Man iv, They raise a wee befor the cock. a 1728 Ramsay Ode Birth of Drumlanrig 47 Ye hardy Heroes..Forsake a wee th' Elysian Plains. 1818 Scott Rob Roy xiv, Bide a wee—bide a wee; you southrons are aye in sic a hurry. 1869 A. Macdonald Love, Law & Theol. vii. 120 In a wee they baith felt their wames leavin' them, an' they maist lost their senses. |
3. A short distance; a little way.
| 1375 Barbour Bruce xiii. 217 Arrowes that felly Mony gret voundis can thame ma, And slew fast of thair hors alsua, That thai vayndist a litell we. Ibid. xvii. 677 Behynd hir a litill we It fell. c 1420 Wyntoun Cron. viii. xxxiii. 5788 We sal fenȝhe ws as we walde fle, And wiþe draw ws a litil we. |
B. adj. a. Extremely small, tiny. (In Sc. use with weaker sense, as a synonym of little.) Often more emphatically wee wee, little wee, wee little.
The Shakes. example is not found in the quarto of 1602; as this has ‘a whay-coloured beard’ in the corresponding sentence, it has been conjectured that the ‘wee-face’ of the Folio may be a mistake for whey-face (cf. Macb. v. iii. 17). However, the reading of the Folio may be taken as evidence that the adj. was known in 1623. In this and in quot. 1617 the adj. is hyphened to the following n., and preceded by little.
| c 1450 Holland Houlate 649 The litill we Wran, That wretchit dorche was. ? 1598 Shakes. Merry W. (1623) i. iv. 32 He hath but a little wee-face, with a little yellow beard. 1617 Heywood Fair Maid of West ii. i, Hee was nothing so tall as I, but a little wee-man, and somewhat huckt backt. 1638 in W. N. Clarke Coll. Lett. (1848) 173 Her ministers gangand in guid auld little short cloakes, with wea blacke velvet neckes. Ibid. 180 Upon his weake wea nagg. 1692 [? Calder] Sc. Presbyt. Eloq. 104 The very wie-ones [marg. Little Children] were then so serious that [etc.]. 1721 Kelly Sc. Prov. A 178 A wie [Foot-note: little] Mouse will creep under a mickle Corn-stack. Ibid. B 35 Better a wie Fire to warm us, than a mickle Fire to burn us. 1721 Ramsay Poems Gloss. 397 Wee, Little; as, A wanton wee Thing. 1726 Fleming's Fulfilling Script. (ed. 5) Table Scots Phr., Wie, little or small. 1786 Burns Inventory 37 Wee Davock hauds the nowt in fother. 1792 ― Song, She is a winsome wee thing. 1818 Scott Hrt. Midl. v, It wad aye serve to keep the puir thing's heart up for a wee while. 1819 J. R. Drake Culprit Fay xv, He banned the water⁓goblins' spite,—For he saw..Their little wee faces above the brine. 1827 G. Darley Sylvia 31 Neater, I ween, though not much ampler, Than wee miss works upon her sampler. 1832 Motherwell Poems, Oh Wae be 6 The wee wee fifes piped loud and shrill. 1846 H. Coleridge Poems II. 23 Like a wee bird struggling in the nest. a 1856 in Strang Glasgow & Clubs 574 You have only to raise the window, haud up your wee finger, and, [etc.]. 1884 Queen Victoria More Leaves 204 We met little Alix on her wee pony. 1889 ‘J. S. Winter’ Mrs. Bob iii, She would be free..to hie herself to London⁓town and take a dear wee little flat. |
b. in superl.
| 1728 Ramsay Reasons Hackney Scribblers 22 To wiest Insects even'd and painted. a 1856 in Strang Glasgow & Clubs 572 They're a' awa, fra the wee'st to the biggest o' them. 1863 ‘Holme Lee’ A. Warleigh II. 271 Strangers..who wore such amplitude of petticoat that in passing between the ranks of infants..they literally swept the wee-est over. 1878 A. J. C. Hare Story of Life (1896) I. 206 Tell me all about the wedding—every smallest, weeest thing. 1883 Black Shandon Bells v, The boat the wee-est black speck on the silver of the water. |
c. a wee bit: = ‘a wee’ (see A. n.). Often quasi-adj. (cf. bit n.2) and quasi-adv. (qualifying an adj.).
| a 1661 [see way-bit]. 1721 Kelly Sc. Prov. A 183 A wie House well fill'd, a wie bit Land well till'd, and a wie Wife well will'd will make a happy Man. 1785 Burns Cottar's Sat. Night 23 His wee-bit ingle, blinkan bonilie. 1823 Moor Suffolk Words 474 ‘A wee bit of a thing’—applied to a child, and to almost every little thing. 1828 Scott F.M. Perth xxvii, A boat will wait for you..at a wee bit creek about half a mile westward from the head of the Tay. 1901 W. R. H. Trowbridge Lett. her Mother to Eliz. xxviii. 140 The champagne..that I had this morning has given me just a wee bit of a migraine. |
d. the wee folk: the fairies.
| 1819 W. S. Mason Stat. Acc. Irel. III. 27 The curate has heard a man swear most solemnly, that he has seen some hundreds of the ‘wee folk’ dancing round these trees. 1854 Allingham Fairies 5 Wee folk, guid folk, Trooping all together; Green jacket, red cap, And grey-cock's feather. 1894 K. Grahame Pagan Papers 162 The quotation suggested a fairy story,..But the Wee Folk were under a cloud: sceptical hints had embittered the chalice. |
e. the Wee Free Kirk: a nickname given to the minority of the Free Church of Scotland which stood apart when the main body amalgamated with the United Presbyterian Church to form the United Free Church in 1900. Hence Wee Frees, Wee Kirkers, the members of the ‘Wee Free’ church. Also transf.
| 1904 Monthly Rev. Oct. 5 The Free Kirk and the ‘Wee’ Kirk. 1904 Times 31 Dec. 8/1 The funds must be handed over to the remnant of the old Free Church—the ‘Wee Frees’, as Scotland nicknames them. 1905 P. W. Wilson Why we believe v. 61 Scotland is convulsed because the property of the United Free Church has been handed over by a court of law to a remnant of Wee Kirkers. 1953 Earl Winterton Orders of Day viii. 92 In 1919..both the Labour and Liberal Oppositions were small and ineffective. The latter, facetiously known as the ‘Wee Frees’..split into two halves led by Sir Donald Maclean and Mr. George Lambert respectively. 1966 Punch 20 July 123/3 His account of the way in which the Wahabis—the Calvinistic ‘wee frees’ of Islam—are surrendering to the worst of Western culture is a lively moral tale in itself. 1979 H. Wilson Final Term i. 10 The smell of power..was in their nostrils, for the first time since the ‘Wee Frees’, the Samuelite Liberals, had left the 1931 Coalition Government. |
f. the wee (small) hours = small hours s.v. hour 3 b. colloq.
| [1787 Burns Death & Dr. Hornbook in Poems & Songs (1968) I. 84 The auld kirk-hammer strak the bell Some wee, short hour ayont the twal.] 1849 C. Brontë Shirley II. ii. 73 She followed the steps of the night, on its pathway of stars, far into the ‘wee sma' hours ayont the twal.’ 1859 [see hour 3 b]. a 1891 H. Melville To Major John Gention in Compl. Wks. (1924) XIII. 366 In the wee hours..how affluent hast thou been on that theme. 1932 ‘L. G. Gibbon’ Sunset Song 232 They'd another long dram, and they argued far into the wee, small hours. 1949 P. Michaels This Perverse Generation v. 44 No one has a persistent inner compulsion to..talk about silly things in crowded, stuffy, little night-club rooms at wee hours of the morning. 1966 ‘H. MacDiarmid’ Company I've Kept viii. 193 We walked back..in the ‘wee sma' 'oors’ of the following morning. 1979 United States 1980/81 (Penguin Travel Guides) 278 Several acts keep the place hopping from dinner time until the wee hours. |
▪ II. wee, n.2 colloq.
(wiː)
[See wee v.]
= wee-wee n. 1.
| 1968 R. Clapperton No News on Monday vi. 61 Wanda is downstairs having a wee. 1971 P. Purser Holy Father's Navy ii. 12 Hurry up, I want to do a wee. 1973 Punch 1 Aug. 139/1 Thought I saw someone comin' in de gate, but it only a dog havin' a wee on de magnolia. |
▪ III. wee, v. colloq.
(wiː)
[Echoic: see wee-wee v.]
intr. To urinate. Also refl. = wet v. 5 d.
| 1934 Dylan Thomas Let. 11 May (1966) 128 Wee on the sun that he bloody well shines not. 1970 Guardian 13 July 9/2 Ladies always have to walk a mile and they'll wee themselves if they don't find something soon. 1976 West Lancs. Evening Gaz. 15 Dec., She hit her daughter because she kept on ‘weeing’ all the time. 1983 Daily Mail 30 May 17/5 Our headmaster told us that any boy caught short should if absolutely necessary wee into an empty milk bottle. |
▪ IV. wee, int.
(wiː)
Imitation of the squeal of a pig.
| a 1842 in Halliwell Nursery Rhymes 119 This little pig said Wee, wee, wee! 1860 Hist. Five little Pigs 31 Poor Piggy ran off crying out in great pain, ‘Wee! wee!! wee!!!’ all the way home. |
▪ V. † wee
= wi'ye, with you. Obs.
| 1611 Chapman May-Day iv. 67 And yet I speake no hurt of them neither. Inno. No Captaine, thus farre, I goe wee. |
▪ VI. wee
obs. f. we, why, woe; var. wy Obs., man.