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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

woad.

The plant Isatis tinctoria.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/wəʊd/Received-Pronunciation/woʊd/General-American
  1. The plant Isatis tinctoria.

    countable · usually
  2. The blue vat dye made from the leaves of the plant through partial drying and fermentation.

    countable · uncountable · usually
Where this word comes from

From Middle English wode, from Old English wād (“woad”), from Proto-West Germanic *waiʀd, from Proto-Germanic *waizdaz (“woad”), from Proto-Indo-European *woydʰ-. Cognate with Old Frisian wēd (“woad”), Dutch wede (“woad”), German Waid (“woad”), and with French guède, Italian guado (“woad”) (both borrowed from Frankish). See also weed.

verb/wəʊd/Received-Pronunciation/woʊd/General-American
  1. To plant or cultivate woad.

  2. To dye with woad.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English wode, from Old English wād (“woad”), from Proto-West Germanic *waiʀd, from Proto-Germanic *waizdaz (“woad”), from Proto-Indo-European *woydʰ-. Cognate with Old Frisian wēd (“woad”), Dutch wede (“woad”), German Waid (“woad”), and with French guède, Italian guado (“woad”) (both borrowed from Frankish). See also weed.

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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.