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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

wed.

To perform the marriage ceremony for; to join in matrimony.

3 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb/ˈwɛd/
  1. To perform the marriage ceremony for; to join in matrimony.

    transitive
    The priest wed the couple.
  2. To take as one's spouse.

    transitive
    She wed her first love.
  3. To take a spouse.

    intransitive
  4. To take each other as a spouse.

    reciprocal
    They will wed in the summer.
  5. To join or commit to, more or less permanently, as if in marriage.

    figuratively · transitive
    I'm not wedded to this proposal; suggest an alternative.
  6. To take to oneself and support; to espouse.

    figuratively · intransitive
  7. To wager, stake, bet, place a bet, make a wager.

    Northern-England · Scotland
    I'd wed my head on that.
Where this word comes from

From Middle English wedden, weddien, from Old English weddian (“to pledge; wed”), from Proto-West Germanic *waddjōn, from Proto-Germanic *wadjōną (“to pledge”), from *wadją (“pledge”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *wedʰ- (“to pledge”). Cognate with Scots wed, wod, wad (“to wed”), Saterland Frisian wädje (“to bet, wager”), West Frisian wedzje (“to bet, wager”), Low German and Dutch wedden (“to bet”), German wetten (“to bet”), Danish vædde (“to bet”), Swedish vädja (“to appeal”), Icelandic veðja (“to bet”); more distantly, to Sanskrit वधू (vadhū́, “bride”). Related also to gage, engage, and wage.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.