Etymology

Probably from OE and ultimately a formation on the widespread Gmc root *weg-, as in the str. v. represented by OE wegan ‘to carry’ and the n. as in OE weg ‘way, direction, road’.  A wk. derivative with a closely comparable sense is recorded once in OE, viz. Beo 1192 bewægned ‘offered (to someone)’, perhaps formed via the derived n. wægn ‘vehicle’. Most authorities therefore assume an OE wk. trans. v. *wægnan as etymon for ME wainen in the senses found in Gaw (thus Mätzner 264n, GDS, TGD), or regard wainen as a ME derivation on OE wægn (so OED), or allow some combination of the two (MED). The formally very similar OIcel vegna ‘to proceed’ is often regarded as a plausible source for the few instances of ME wainen in intrans. senses (mainly in alliterative verse), i.e. ‘to go, depart’, and McGee (355, 423) suggests tentatively that it could have played some part in the development generally of ME wainen, which one might understand as ‘a coalescence of several verbs’ (423), but it is not attested before the 14c. (ONP) and there is reason to doubt it was available in VAN. 

PGmc Ancestor

*weg-

Proposed ON Etymon (OIcel representative)

vegna ‘to proceed’
(ONP vegna (1) (vb.),)

Other Scandinavian Reflexes

Far vignast, Icel vegna

OE Cognate

*wægnan, cp. wægn (n.)  'carriage, waggon (etc.)'

Phonological and morphological markers

Summary category

CCC5c

(CCC1)

Attestation

Apart from one citation from a1450 ?Audelay The pater noster (Dc 302), all of MED’s handful of quotations in its senses (a) (‘to carry in wagon, transport; convey …’) and (b) (‘to cause to go, send’ etc.) come from Orrm, the Gaw MS and DT.  MED’s sense (c) (‘to resist, eschew, give up …’) has a quite different distribution, being recorded only in (c1450) Boothe be ware (CotR 2.23) and in variant readings in mss of Chaucer (in every case as an alternative to weiven).

Occurrences in the Gersum Corpus

Gaw 264, 984, 2456 etc.; Pe 131, 249; Cl 1504, 1616, 1701; Pat 467

On the difficulties of distinguishing wayne and wayue, and the various editorial readings, see wayue.

Bibliography

MED wainen (v.1) , OED wain (v.) , , Dance wayne, de Vries, vegna (1), Mag. vegna (1), AEW be-wægnan (p. 380), DOE be-wægned