sb. and a. Also 6 wayne-, weyn-, wenling, 6–7 wain(e)ling. [f. WEAN v. + -LING1.] A. sb. A young child or animal newly weaned.
1532–3. Act 24 Hen. VIII., c. 9 § 1. Diuers persons … haue vsed … to kille yonge beastes, called waynelinges, steres, bullockes, and hesters, of one or two yeres old.
1536. Primer, Compline (Ps. cxxxi. 2), K vij. I am a weanlynge in very dede.
1550. S’hampton Crt. Leet Rec. (1905), 5. Yf any of them have two kyne or wenlings.
1589. A. F., Virg. Bucol., I. 2. The tender weanlings of our sheepe.
1614. Rowlands, Fooles Bolt, D 2 b. Mens Children went not then to write and read As euery weaneling now a dayes must do.
1655. Moufet & Bennet, Health’s Improv., viii. 58. Calves are either Sucklings or Wainlings.
1710. Hilman, Tusser Rediv., Dec. (1744), 145. By this Stanza it seems as though he recommended the Housing of Weanlings.
1883. O. W. Holmes, in Atlantic Monthly, Sept., 322. Is it a weanling’s weakness for the past That … Still keeps our gray old chapel’s name of ‘King’s’?
1916. K. J. Saunders, Adv. Chr. Soul, 24. Akbar … shut up a score of weanlings away from all contact with adults.
fig. 1594. O. B., Quest. Profit. Concern., L 4 b. The other starre here meant, is called Luciferum, Venus her owne starre, to whom bawdes are wont to complaine, when they were deceiued or robbed of any of their sequestred weanlings.
B. adj. Recently weaned.
1637. Milton, Lycidas, 46. As killing as the Canker to the Rose, Or Taint-worm to the weanling Herds that graze.
a. 1722. Lisle, Husb. (1757), 214. I doubted some weanling-calves I had wanted water.
1726. Pope, Odyss., XIX. 469. Hermes,… Whose shrine with weanling lambs he wont to load.
1869. Blackmore, Lorna D., lxxv. Into the old farmhouse I tottered, like a weanling child.
fig. 1859. Meredith, R. Feverel, xxxix. That part of his pastoral duty he wisely leaves to weanling laymen.
1871. Swinburne, Songs bef. Sunrise, Eve Revol., 57. Breasts that bare Our fathers’ generations, whereat lay The weanling peoples and the tribes that were.
