different between wizened vs wearish

English

Etymology

wizen +? ed.

Inherited from Middle English wisenen, from Old English wisnian, weosnian, from Proto-Germanic *wisn?jan. Cognate with Icelandic visna.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?w?z?nd/, /?wiz?nd/

Verb

wizened

1. simple past tense and past participle of wizen

Adjective

wizened (comparative more wizened, superlative most wizened)

1. Withered; lean and wrinkled by shrinkage as from age or illness.
   • 1816, Sir Walter Scott, Old Mortality, ch. 8:

     "Ill-fard, crazy, crack-brained gowk, that she is!" exclaimed the housekeeper. . . "If it hadna been that I am mair than half a gentlewoman by my station, I wad hae tried my ten nails in the wizen'd hide o' her!"

   • 1907, Jack London, Before Adam, ch. 7:

     He was old, too, wizened with age, and the hair on his face was gray.

   • 2010 May 13, Richard Corliss, "Cannes: Best-Ever Film by a 101-Year-Old Man," Time (retrieved 5 Oct 2013):

     In the simple fable about old age reconciling itself to memory and destiny, Mastroianni wears the wizened smile of a man who knows he is visiting his youth for the last time.

Translations

English

Etymology

Possibly from weary + -ish.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /?w?????/

Adjective

wearish (comparative more wearish, superlative most wearish)

1. (obsolete) Tasteless, having a sickly flavour; insipid.
2. (obsolete or dialectal) Sickly, wizened, feeble.
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, IV.5:

     Who was to weet a wretched wearish elfe, / With hollow eyes and rawbone cheekes forspent […].

   • , New York Review Books, 2001, p.16:

     Democritus, as he is described by Hippocrates and Laertius, was a little wearish old man, very melancholy by nature, averse from company in his latter days, and much given to solitariness […].

Derived terms

• wearishness

Anagrams

• washier