wee

What it means

1. 1.

   Small — but in the north of Ireland it is attached to almost any noun regardless of size, as a marker of friendliness. A wee bill, a wee minute, a wee lorry.

In use

• I'll just take your wee card there.

  Note: Said by a shop assistant in Belfast or Derry. The card is not small; 'wee' is politeness, not measurement.

• Do you want a wee cup of tea?

Where it comes from

From Scots, carried into Ulster by seventeenth-century plantation settlement, which is why the usage stops fairly sharply around the Ulster border and is heard in Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan as well as the six counties. It is a discourse softener rather than a size word.