Wee vs Wey - What's the difference?
wee | wey |
(Scotland, Northern Ireland, North England, NZ) Small, little.
* 2008 , (James Kelman), Kieron Smith, Boy , Penguin 2009, p. 73:
(colloquial, uncountable) urine
(colloquial) An act of urination.
(colloquial) To urinate.
An old English measure of weight containing 224 pounds; equivalent to 2 hundredweight.
* c. 1376 , William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman , Version B, Passus 5, Line 91:
* 1843 , The Penny Cyclopaedia of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge p. 202:
* 1882 , James Edwin Thorold Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England , Volume 4, p. 208:
* (rfdate): A wey is 6 tods, or 182 pounds, of wool; a load, or five quarters, of wheat, 40 bushels of salt, each weighing 56 pounds; 32 cloves of cheese, each weighing seven pounds; 48 bushels of oats and barley; and from two cwt. to three cwt. of butter. — Simmonds.
As a noun wee
is .As a proper noun wey is
an english river which flows through guildford, and is a tributary of the thames.wee
English
(wikipedia wee)Etymology 1
From (etyl) (15c).Adjective
(er)- I had not seen a wee' boy do it like that before. He was ' weer than me and his swimming was just like splashing about.
- You looked a little cold so I lit a wee fire.
References
* Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary: Tenth Edition (1997)Etymology 2
UnknownNoun
(-)- to have a wee
Synonyms
* wee wee * See also * See alsoVerb
Synonyms
* See alsowey
English
Noun
(en noun)- Than though I hadde this wouke ywonne a weye of Essex cheese.
- Seven pounds make a clove, 2 cloves a stone, 2 stone a tod, 6 1/2 tods a wey, 2 weys a sack, 12 sacks a last. [...] It is to be observed here that a sack is 13 tods, and a tod 28 pounds, so that the sack is 364 pounds.
- Cheese and salt are purchased by the wey of two hundredweight, or by the stone of fourteen pounds.