Q From Betty Thaeder, Toronto : I came across a reference in a newspaper last week to the Great Wen , which appeared to be London. Why that name and where did it come from?
A It is indeed a reference to London, an uncomplimentary one. It’s now largely forgotten other than by historians — Oxford dictionaries mark it as archaic — though journalists still occasionally find it a useful mock-eruditism with which to pepper their prose. Even more curiously, an archive of British newspapers that I consulted shows that it underwent a mild revival in the early 2000s.
It’s particularly puzzling to many people because they don’t know the meaning of wen , a word almost as rare as Great Wen . A wen is a type of benign tumour, a sebaceous cyst, most commonly found on the scalp. It’s an Old English word of obscure origin, though it’s known to have had parallels in several ancient Germanic languages.
From medieval times, people generalised the idea to refer to any sort of protrusion and used it figuratively as an insult.
I do allow this Wen to be as familiar with me, as my dogge.
Henry IV , Part 2, by William Shakespeare, 1600. Prince Hal is referring dismissively to the obese Falstaff.