wee
Americanadjective
-
little; very small.
- Synonyms:
- minuscule, diminutive, tiny
-
very early.
in the wee hours of the morning.
noun
verb
adjective
noun
Etymology
Origin of wee
before 1150 for an earlier sense; Middle English we, variant of wei (small) quantity, Old English wēg, Anglian form of wǣge weight, akin to wegan to weigh 1
Vocabulary lists containing wee
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The suspects were stopped by police as they headed in three vehicles in the wee hours of Sunday to the U.K’s Royal Air Force Fairford base in Gloucestershire.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 27, 2026
Fighting scams keeps Jones up into the wee hours, and he often has dozens of tabs open on his computer at once.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 22, 2026
Open titlist, called the evening “completely insane” and said finding her best tennis in the wee hours of the morning was difficult.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 6, 2026
The young mum spent nine months with her baby - a beautiful boy with "gorgeous wee black hair" - before he was taken from her.
From BBC ● Aug. 30, 2026
Eventually, in the wee hours, they returned to their rooms and slept—some peacefully, some fitfully.
From "The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics" by Daniel James Brown
Ofschoon Coen in 1617 aan hem schreef, dat de zaak weer couragieuselijk moest hervat worden, bleek hij er in 1618 niet al te zeer mee ingenomen.
“What weer it about t’owd one?” said another.
From The Parson O' Dumford by George Manville Fenn
I weer in the wrong, and I shouldn’t feel it weer raight to go back theer again.
From The Parson O' Dumford by George Manville Fenn
Catch’t e the burd-lime’s trecherus twigs, To weer he chanc’d to stray, The burd iz fassend fathers leaves, Then gladly flies away.
From Random Rhymes and Rambles by William Aldis Wright
“Well, I weer, sir; only I shouldn’t like it to seem to ha’ come from me.
From The Parson O' Dumford by George Manville Fenn
“She had the weest, teentiest toes, And the leastest speck of a blackish nose, With great, great eyes”—“Coo, coo! coo, coo!”
From Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad by Daphne Dale
They built, and they presented to me, the weest piano ever you saw—a piano so wee that it could be carried in an ordinary motor car.
From A Minstrel in France by Sir Harry Lauder
He, the "old bird," the cool hand, the sharp one of Ours, to have been done brown, to be the joke of the mess, the laugh of all the men, down to the weest drummer-boy!
From Cecil Castlemaine's Gage, Lady Marabout's Troubles, and Other Stories by Ouida
To-day is Quentin's birthday and he loved his gifts, perhaps most of all the weest, cunningest live pig you ever saw, presented him by Straus.
From Letters to His Children by Theodore Roosevelt
D'ye mind the wee lassie that was sae still till she began to know ye—the weest one of them a'?
From Between You and Me by Sir Harry Lauder
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
