Someone I know has taken to using the word “wee” meaning to urinate, e.g., “Pretty soon I will need to to wee.” I recognized this as a British replacement for “pee,” along the same lines as “poo” substituting for American “poop,” and I thought it would make for a pretty easy post for this blog.
Well, similar to Bogart’s Rick in Casablanca, I misinformed myself. To be sure, “wee” in both the verb form and the noun (“He had a wee”) is indeed British, as well as Irish and Australian. The OED‘s first citation for the verb is a 1934 letter from the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas: “Wee on the sun that he bloody well shines not.” The first noun form is in Richard Clapperton’s 1968 book No News on Monday, with the line, “Wanda is downstairs having a wee.”
The problem was establishing that any American other than my one informant uses it. None of the citations in the OED or in Green’s Dictionary of Slang is American. Nor, as far as I can tell, has “wee” has ever been used to mean urinate in the New York Times. I searched “having a wee” in the News on the Web (NOW) corpus of more than ten million words published online in English-language sources from 2010 to the present. Here’s the geographical spread.
The first number represents the number of times the phrase was used, the second how many words (in thousands) in corpus come from that country. But the measly 13 in the U.S. isn’t even a legit number. Eleven of them are false positives (“having a wee drink”) and the other two are quotes from British people.
Most of the New Zealand hits were real, however:
In 2018 the Australian linguist Lauren Gawne posted an article on the Strong Language blog about the differences in nuance between “a pee” and “a wee.” She didn’t mention anything about America, but several commenters identified themselves as Americans and said they had never used or heard a countryman use “wee.” One wrote: “American-born in 1958. I use pee as the standard polite euphemism for piss, and it is both verb and noun. I don’t say wee; it strikes me as doubly euphemistic and (what can I say?) twee.”
That brings me to “wee-wee,” which actually is an American juvenile form to “urinate.” Green’s Dictionary of Slang has a quote from Sidney Kingsley’s 1934 play Dead End: “Wee-wee! He’s godda go wee-wee!” The duplicated term was used in my own family when I was a kid. To make matters more complicated, “wee-wee” also shows up in Britain and Australia.
But that still left me with no other American instances of “wee.” Desperate, I turned to Facebook and asked my friends if they had ever encountered it. I got more than a few negative responses, but also some positive ones:
- “Yes, heard that all my life in Louisiana from family.”
- “I’ve heard it all my life. I grew up in Texas and Louisiana. It was common.”
- “Here in Kentucky wee-wee and taking a wee were the same thing. When we were littles it was taking a wee or going wee-wee — interchangeable. Starting around sixth grade taking a wee became taking a piss.”
- “’Have to go wee’ is something we said as kids (growing up in the Detroit area) and (now) say to grandkids. Mom grew up outside of Pittsburgh, for what that’s worth.”
Ben Zimmer, language columnist for the Wall Street Journal, wrote that “Back in 2007, a Sacramento radio station held a highly misguided promotional contest called ‘Hold Your Wee for a Wii.’ A woman who participated in the contest died of water intoxication and her family won a settlement.”
And the distinguished novelist Richard Bausch wrote:
Bobby and I were five or six and our step grandfather Dick Underwood came by in a shiny new Packard convertible, and took us for a ride. We were riding past an army post—Korean War still going on across the world (I remember wondering why we couldn’t hear it). Dick Underwood looked over at us and said, “I’ve gotta wee.” Bobby and I had never heard an adult say anything like that. We laughed like hell, and we never forgot it.
And they say Facebook is a waste of time.
notoneoffbritishisms.com 
That first example “wee weep” is a different meaning of “wee” meaning “small”.
Now you have posted this, as a Brit, I can’t actually remember if I say wee or pee. They both sound right, but I think I would tend to use it/them as nouns, although as verbs they also seem correct.
Wee to me has childish connotations. I’d more likely say pee.
I’m a 71-year-old native Californian. My mother was from Michigan, my father from San Francisco (born in Spokane, WA). When I was a youngster, “wee” was the term we used–I’m the oldest of four children. I tried it with my sons, but I think by son #2, we’d moved on to “pee” (or usually, “go to the bathroom”).
Scot here, in plolite company I’ll go for a pee (but as a kid it was a wee wee or a wee). In adult, male company it’s a slash.
Or even polite company 🙂
In Australia we used “poop” as a noun for many years. However, Poop was always pronounced to rhyme with “book” not with “loop”.
In the 90s the old Australian use of poop began to fade away.
In the last few years I’ve noticed people born in the 90s or later using “poop”as verb as well as a noun with the American pronunciation. When I challenged on young woman about her pronunciation of the word, she said she’d heard it in US TV shows. SHe didn’t know about the old Australian pronunciation.
In Scotland and parts of northern England the “oo” in “loop” and “book” is the same sound.
Confused for a moment.
In my Navy days, it was to “take a leak,” now it is “take a whiz.”
Having a full bladder was “eyeballs starting to float.”
Having to urinate urgently, was “have to piss like a racehorse.”
Americans would be getting it from the Australian TV show, “Bluey”, which introduced the ‘tactical wee’ and the ‘bush wee’.
Why *do* Americans use the decidedly puerile ‘poop’, anyway?
Is that the kids cartoon “Bluey” or the old cop show with Lucky Grills?
Wee is also used as meaning tiny.
Also, there’s a joking pun use of ‘wee-wee’ on the 1985 American comedy film Clue, where Eileen Brennan’s Mrs Peacock character asks where the ladies’ room is and the French maid, Yvette, points and says ‘Oui oui Madame’ and Eileen Brennan sheepishly says ‘No, I just have to powder my nose’.
As a young child growing up in Brixton, London, the term “wee-wee” was commonly used. Probably that memory is between about 1965 (when I was 4) and 1969 (when I was 8). After that, I’d have graduated to Wee, or Pee.
I wasn’t going to respond to this piddling post, but this afternoon, on hearing that the King is to go into hospital for a prostate procedure, the missus observed “I’m not sure that news should have leaked out!” I think the pun works in American English too.
I don’t often say ‘leak’; it’s usually ‘going to the loo’ or ‘paying a visit’. The nearest I get to saying ‘wee’ is ‘widdle’. Me and the missus never say ‘piss’ for urine, though we say ‘pissed’, e.g. ‘pissed out (of) his tree’. We agree that even ‘pee’ is a bit vulgar. But we differ on ‘crap’, which I think is ok, advisedly; the wife never says it.
All this has reminded me of Cat and Mouse by Gunter Grass… you know, the bit where the teenage girls wee on the ice to melt it. Now you’ll get round to reading it, won’t you.
Oh, and can anyone from the North East explain for me the verse containing ‘we can have a wee-wee, we can have a wet on the wall’ – I’ve never understood it.
Hi, David.
Well, I’m from the north-east and remember buying the ‘Fog on the Tyne’ album the week it came out.
Basically, it refers to the practice of (men) pissing against a wall; no more and no less.
John
I bought ‘Fog on the Tyne’ later John, after the single was played on the radio. With money from my Saturday job at the Co Op, I should think. Yes, I get ‘pissing against a wall’ but what about the rest of the verse?
We can swing together,
We can have a wee wee,
We can have a wet on the wall.
If someone slips a whisper,
That is simple sister,
Slap them down and slap it on their smalls.
I found myself saying ‘wee’ the other day; didn’t think I said it. I don’t suppose anyone’s interested. Even Ben.