weazen NOUN weazen is a slang word for throat. It actually means shrivelled You with a uncle too! Why, I knowed you at Gargery’s when you was so small a wolf that I could have took your weazen betwixt this finger and thumb and chucked you away dead (Great Expectations by Charles Dickens)

wery ADV very Be wery careful o’ vidders all your life (Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens) See wibrated

wherry NOUN wherry is a small swift rowing boat for one person It was flood tide when Daniel Quilp sat himself down in the wherry to cross to the opposite shore. (The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens)

whether PREP whether means which of the two in this example we came in full view of a great island or continent (for we knew not whether) (Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift)

whetstone NOUN a whetstone is a stone used to sharpen knives and other tools I dropped pap’s whetstone there too (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain)

wibrated VERB in Dickens’s use of the English language “w” often replaces “v” when he is reporting speech. So here “wibrated” means “vibrated”. In Pickwick Papers a judge asks Sam Weller (who constantly confuses the two letters) “Do you spell it with a ‘v’ or a ‘w’?” to which Weller replies “That depends upon the taste and fancy of the speller, my Lord” There are strings … in the human heart that had better not be wibrated (Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens)

wicket NOUN a wicket is a little door in a larger entrance Having rested here, for a minute or so, to collect a good burst of sobs and an imposing show of tears and terror, he knocked loudly at the wicket (Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens)

without CONJ without means unless You don’t know about me, without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain)

wittles NOUN wittles is a slang word which means food I live on broken wittles – and I sleep on the coals (David Copperfield by Charles Dickens) See wibrated

woo VERB courts or forms a proper relationship with before it woo (The Flea by John Donne)

words, to have PHRASE if you have words with someone you have a disagreement or an argument I do not want to have words with a young thing like you. (Black Beauty by Anna Sewell)

workhouse NOUN workhouses were places where the homeless were given food and a place to live in return for doing very hard work And the Union workhouses? demanded Scrooge. Are they still in operation? (A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens)

yawl NOUN a yawl is a small boat kept on a bigger boat for short trips. Yawl is also the name for a small fishing boat She sent out her yawl, and we went aboard (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain)