Ween, meaning “to believe” is archaic and often only used and seen in creative writing, not conversation, nor academic, technical, or practical writing.
Wean means “to accustom a person to something—to cause someone to become dependent or independent of something.” The original and primary meaning is “to guide children or animals to lose the habit of eating their mother’s milk, or other food for babies, and to gain the habit of eating other foods.” However, it can be used for almost anything that one consumes (metaphorically):
At what age do you wean children off baby food?
How can we wean someone from alcohol?
I want to wean myself away from social media.
Alternatively, to describe gaining a new kind of nourishment, we can use wean as in the following sentences:
Americans have all been weaned on commercial television.
In some countries, people have been weaned on propaganda.
As shown in these sentences, wean is not directly about habits or addictions, but rather about becoming accustomed to, or getting used to.
More Examples of “Wean” in a Sentence
- One of the movement’s objectives is also to wean the city’s children from indoor video games to the free outdoors.
- Before 1919, physicians prescribed milder forms of opiates to help wean patients off opium.
- This has annoyed music fans and done little to wean them off the pirate websites, which offer what they want for free.
- It took months to wean my notebook off foreign language ads.
- Monica tries to wean him off drinking but regrets it when he becomes extremely boring.
More Examples of “Ween” in a Sentence
- Julia weened that the sun would rise in the morning.
- In my unweathered youth, I weened that the world would be a different place.
- We weened that knowledge was power.
- I once weened that anything was possible if you put your mind to it.
- Hector would often ween that love could conquer all.