Also Vend; 8 Winde. [ad. G. Wende, Winde (pl. Wenden, Winden = Da. Vender, ON. Vindr, OHG. Winida, OE. Winedas, Weonod-, med.L. Venedi, Veneti), of doubtful origin.]
1. A member of the Slavonic race now inhabiting Lusatia in the east of Saxony, but formerly extending over Northern Germany; a Sorb.
1786. trans. J. R. Forster’s Hist. Voy. North, 101, note. The Vandals mentioned here, are indubitably the Wends, or that tribe of the Sclavonians which opposed the Moguls and the Tartars who fought under the banners of the latter.
1788. Encycl. Brit. (ed. 3), II. 700/1. (Austria), The Windes, who are mixed with the Germans in these countries.
1830. Encycl. Metrop., XXI. 340. The Vends are a well-made, strong, courageous, and industrious people.
1843. Penny Cycl., XXVI. 206/1. The language of the Vends … dates its first literature from the Reformation.
1861. Pearson, Early & Mid. Ages, 155. Canute was still unable to subdue the Wends, who … made the Baltic a Slavonian lake.
1886. Baring-Gould, Germany, xliii. 264. Henry I. had created the Margravate of Brandenburg as a bulwark against the heathen Wends, who lived on the Baltic.
2. Southern Wends: (see quot.).
1822. Encycl. Brit., Suppl. V. 242. In 640, the Sclavonians took possession of Illyria,… and they still retain it, under the names of Servians, Croatians, and Southern Wends. Ibid. The southern Wends … are now mixed with Germans in Carniola, Carinthia, and Lower Stiria.
