Join free

wem

English · Deutsch

AI In plain words

Writing a short explanation…

Written by a house AI from the entry below, in your language. The entry itself is the source.

wem¹

  • /wɛm/

Rhymes with -ɛm

Where it comes from

From Middle English wem, wemme, from Old English womm (“stain, spot”), from Proto-Germanic *wammaz (“stain, spot”), from Proto-Indo-European *wemh₁- (“to spew, vomit”). Cognate with Icelandic vamm (“loss, damage”), Latin vomō (“to vomit”, verb) (whence English vomit), Ancient Greek ἐμέω (eméō, “to spew”) (English emesis), Lithuanian vémti (“to vomit”), Sanskrit वमति (vamati, “to vomit”). The sense development would be "vomit" > "stain", "fault".

noun wems · weam · weem · wame · wan

  1. UK, dialectal A spot, stain, or mark; (by extension) a (moral) blemish or fault. Smock, climbe a-pace, that I maie see my ioyes; / Oh heauen and paradize are all but toyes / Compar'd with this sight I now behould, / Which well might keepe a man from being olde. / A prettie rysing wombe without a weame / That shone as bright as anie siluer streame ...

Wem²

Where it comes from

Recorded as Weme 1086 (Domesday Book); from Old English wamm or wemm.

proper noun

  1. A small market town and civil parish with a town council in north Shropshire, England (OS grid ref SJ5129).

Talk about this word

Cite this
MLA

"wem." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/wem. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026.

APA

wem. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/wem

Chicago

"wem." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/wem.

BibTeX
@misc{wem_2026,
  title = {wem},
  howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://micwyn.com/word/wem},
  urldate = {2026-11-06}
}