weaning [医] 断奶
weaning[ noun ]
the act of substituting other food for the mother's milk in the diet of a child or young mammal
<noun.act>
Wean \Wean\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Weaned}; p. pr. & vb. n.
{Weaning}.] [OE. wenen, AS. wenian, wennan, to accustom; akin
to D. wennen, G. gew["o]hnen, OHG. giwennan, Icel. venja, Sw.
v["a]nja, Dan. v[ae]nne, Icel. vanr accustomed, wont; cf. AS.
[=a]wenian to wean, G. entw["o]hnen. See {Wont}, a.]
1. To accustom and reconcile, as a child or other young
animal, to a want or deprivation of mother's milk; to take
from the breast or udder; to cause to cease to depend on
the mother nourishment.
And the child grew, and was weaned; and Abraham made
a great feast the same day that Isaac was weaned.
--Gen. xxi. 8.
2. Hence, to detach or alienate the affections of, from any
object of desire; to reconcile to the want or loss of
anything. ``Wean them from themselves.'' --Shak.
The troubles of age were intended . . . to wean us
gradually from our fondness of life. --Swift.
- The city recently scrapped a Dollars 128m contract for driverless cars with Sumitomo of Japan, largely because of US/Japanese trade tensions. And there is also the problem of weaning travellers from their cars.
- But even the most optimistic government officials concede that whatever troop cutbacks are in store, weaning West Germans from four decades of military-supplied economic nourishment will not be easy.
- Some small publishers say they already have started weaning themselves from the chains.
- Whether in desperate Peru or in Mexico, Canada or the U.S., however, weaning a nation from past policies will at some point require more than good ideas; it will take large acts of political leadership.
- More significant, it would establish a three-phase process for weaning the company from dependence on the program.
- Raising incentives on the Premier also runs counter to hopes of Chrysler officials of weaning car buyers from rebates.
- Mendelson said buprenorphine may be particularly useful in weaning abusers away from "speedball," a combination of heroin and cocaine that is becoming more widely used by drug-dependent people.
- Byrne said the REA has adopted a strategy that includes steering financially healthy co-ops toward the private market for their loans and weaning them away from federal aid.
- Lepisto acknowledged that there had been some problem weaning military personnel as well as defense contractors from reliance on traditional paper documents.
- In the financial markets, this serves only to increase doubts that a Bush administration can make any real headway in reducing the deficit and weaning the U.S. from borrowed foreign capital.