a. Also 6–7 wodden, woodden, 6–8 woden. [f. WOOD sb.1 + -EN4.]
I. 1. Made or consisting of wood.
1538. Elyot, Dict., Durateus, wodden.
1577. Googe, Heresbach’s Husb., I. 37. Raking them with woodden Rakes.
1577. trans. Bullinger’s Decades, II. ii. (1592), 121. To fall downe prostrate before a wooden Idoll.
1611. Coryat, Crudities, 34. The images of many of the French Kings, set in certain wodden [ed. 1776 woden] cupbords.
1683. Moxon, Mech. Exerc., Printing, xxiv. ¶ 1. If the Joyner performed his work well in making the Wooden-work.
1683. J. Reid, Scots Gard’ner (1907), 40. Beat every two or three rows of turf, while moist, with the wooden-beater.
1726. Swift, Gulliver, II. vii. A kind of wooden Machine.
1831. Scott, Ct. Robt., xv. A massive wooden stool.
1860. Tyndall, Glac., I. xxvii. 197. I reached a wooden hut.
1898. A. Austin, Lamia’s Winter Quarters, 69. The slowly-rolling wheels of a wooden wain … with wooden wheels, wooden pole, and wooden yoke.
b. transf. in various occas. senses: Made or produced by means of wood; dull or dead, as the sound of wood when struck; relating to or occupied with wood; full of objects made of wood; hard and stiff like wood.
1606. Shaks., Tr. & Cr., I. iii. 155. Like a strutting Player … To heare the woodden Dialogue and sound ’Twixt his stretcht footing, and the Scaffolage. Ibid. (1610), Temp., III. i. 62. I … would no more endure This wodden slauerie [sc. piling logs].
1663. Butler, Hud., I. ii. 699. Secure from Wooden Blow.
1677. Moxon, Mech. Exerc., iii. 57. Put the whole lump into a wooden Fire.
1703. T. N., City & C. Purchaser, 261. Trees … useful for the Carpenter, Joyner, or other wooden Tradesman to work upon.
1897. Howells, Landlort at Lion’s Head, 442. In the woodenest outskirts of North Cambridge.
1897. Allbutt’s Syst. Med., IV. 762. A feeling as if the throat were ‘wooden.’
1899. J. Hutchinson, in Archives Surg., X. No. 38. Descr. Plate xvii. The fingers have lost all plumpness, and become slender, pale, and wooden.
2. fig. Having some quality likened to the hard dry consistence of wood, or to its inferior value as compared with precious metal or the like. a. Lacking grace, liveliness, interest, or the like; expressionless, spiritless; dull and inert; stiff and lifeless.
a. 1566. R. Edwards, Damon & Pithias (1571), B 3 b. He wyll neuer blush, he hath a wodden face.
1625. Bacon, Ess., Boldness (Arb.), 519. When a Bold Fellow is out of Countenance;… that puts his Face into a most Shruncken, and woodden Posture.
1813. R. H., in Examiner, 17 May, 315/2. The drawing and character are not in some parts feeble and wooden.
1863. Kinglake, Crimea, I. xiv. 215. The seeming poverty of his intellect, his blank wooden looks.
1887. Saintsbury, Hist. Elizab. Lit., iv. (1890), 130. This earlier and woodener matter [of poetry].
1899. Athenæum, 29 April, 526/2. His accuracy would do credit to a dryasdust antiquary of the most wooden type.
b. Of persons or their attributes: Mentally dull; insensitive, inapprehensive; unintelligent, blockish.
a. 1586. Sidney, Astr. & Stella, Sonn. vii. who have so leaden eyes, as not to see sweete Beauties showe: Or seeing, have so wooden wits as not that worth to knowe.
1591. Shaks., 1 Hen. VI., V. iii. 89. Ile win this Lady Margaret. For whom? Why for my King: Tush, that’s a woodden thing.
1659. S. Lee, Temple of Solomon, 194. Their lying wonders … so often recited in their wodden Legends.
a. 1697. Aubrey, Lett. Eminent Persons (1813), II. 453, note. The Rumpe of a House, ’twas the wooden invention of Generall Browne (a woodmonger).
1698. Christ Exalted, 40. To talk of a Law that admits of Sin, is to make the Maker of such a wooden Law to be little better than a wooden God.
1805. Moore, To Lady Heathcote, 51. Those fops … With heads as wooden as thy ware, And, Heaven knows! not half so polish’d.
1830. Galt, Lawrie T., IV. ii. (1849), 150. The sight of that wooden old man, as I had often spoken of him … weeping like a woman … surprised me.
1833. Carlyle, Ess., Diderot (1872), V. 7. Withal, however, he is wooden; thoroughly mechanical.
1859. Geo. Eliot, Adam Bede, v. He’s got a bad ear for music…. When people have wooden heads … it can’t be helped.
1871. Earle, Philol. Engl. Tongue, iv. 178. The wooden notion that it is an inherent quality in a word to be of this or that part of speech.
† c. Of inferior character, poor, worthless.
1592. Lyly, Gallathea, II. iii. I shall haue but wodden lucke.
c. 1630. Risdon, Surv. Devon, § 104 (1810), 100. In old time were golden prelates, and wooden chalices, but in this time, wooden prelates and golden chalices. [Cf. CHALICE 2 γ, quot. 1528.]
1719. De Foe, Crusoe, I. (Globe), 119. Making a wooden Spade … but this did my Work in but a wooden manner.
† 3. Belonging to the woods, sylvan. Obs. rare.
1606. Chapman, Gentl. Usher, I. B 2 b. Syluanus … this woodden god.
1843. Carlton, New Purchase, 50. Our wooden country’s mighty rough … for some folks. Ibid., 115. Religious meetings in the wooden world.
II. Special Collocations. † 4. Wooden cut: = WOODCUT. So wooden picture, print. Obs.
1683. Moxon, Mech. Exerc., Printing, 1. Cutting their Letters upon Blocks in whole Pages or Forms, as among us our Wooden Pictures are Cut.
1691. Wood, Ath. Oxon., I. 31. Printed from a Wooden Cut the Picture of a Bear baited by six Dogs.
1706. Hearne, Collect., 25 Feb. (O.H.S.), I. 194. Raphael, a Wooden Print.
1770. Luckombe, Hist. Printing, 92. Elegant initial letters, and fine wooden cuts.
1837. Hallam, Lit. Eur., I. I. ix. § 18. 470. Otto Bremfels of Strasburg … published a … work in three volumes folio, with 238 wooden cuts of plants.
[1848. Lowell, Fab. Critics, 1596, note. Cuts rightly called wooden, as all must admit.]
5. Wooden horse. a. [cf. L. equus ligneus.] A designation for a ship. Obs. or arch.
1599. Nashe, Lenten Stuffe, 29. They are glad on their wodden horses to post after [the herring].
1639. Fuller, Holy War, V. xxi. (1647), 264. The Low-countreys, the best stable of woodden horses, and most potent in Shipping.
1824. Scott, Redgauntlet, ch. xv. [He] saw nothing in this worse than an ordinary fit of sea-sickness…He assured his passenger … that he hoped to drink a can … with him…, for all that he felt a little out of the way for riding the wooden horse.
b. An instrument of punishment, chiefly military, formerly in use (= HORSE sb. 6 b): see quot. 1688. Hist.
1629. Lex Scripta Isle of Man (1819), 103. The Offender [for theft] … under the Value [of 61/2d.] to be whipped, or sett upon a Wooden Horse ordained for such Offenders.
1648. in Rushw., Hist. Coll., IV. II. 1369. Henry Matthews and Robert Rowe were … tried by Court Marshal and sentenced to ride the Wooden-Horse at the Royal Exchange.
1678. Butler, Hud., III. iii. 212. Worse Than mannaging a Wooden Horse.
1688. R. Holme, Armoury, III. xix. (Roxb.), 220/1. Moderne punishments used among the Souldiery…. Ridding the wooden horse; setting him on an horse made of wood with a sharp rigged back, his hands tyed behind him, and Musketts or weights hung at his feet.
c. 1700. J. Lewis, Mem. Pr. William Henry (1789), 11. The Duke bid his boys … put the taylor on the wooden horse, which stood in the presence-room for the punishment of offenders, as is usual in martial law.
1760. Cautions & Advices to Officers of Army, 44. Punishments … inflicted by Officers without the Sentence of a Court-Martial,… Picketting—tying neck and heels, and riding the wooden horse.
1899. Lt.-Col. T. S. Baldock, Cromwell as Soldier, 360. Two soldiers of Dean’s regiment rode the ‘wooden horse’ for an hour in front of the Royal Exchange.
† c. A name for the scaffold or gallows; also for an instrument of torture: = HORSE sb. 24. Obs.
1642. [see HORSE sb. 24].
1731. Chandler, trans. Limborch’s Hist. Inquis., II. 222. A Wooden Bench, which they call the Wooden Horse [described at length].
d. The wooden figure of a horse (ἵππος δουράτεος, Odyssey VIII. 492, 512) in which the Greek invaders were concealed at the siege of Troy. Hence † Wooden-horse v. (nonce-wd.), trans. to capture by means of this.
1622. J. Taylor (Water P.), Sir Gregory Nonsence, Wks. (1630), II. 3/2. Vntill the Woodden Horse of trusty Synon, Foald a whole litter of mad Colts in Harnesse.
1666. Third Advice to Painter, 32. Hark to Cassandraes Song, e’re Fate destroy, By their own Navyes; Wooden horse thy Troy.
1835. Thirlwall, Greece, I. vi. 226. Epeus was celebrated as the builder of the wooden horse in which the heroes were concealed.
e. A wooden structure in a gymnasium, for vaulting exercise: = HORSE sb. 6 c.
1854. G. Roland, Gymnastics, 27. The wooden horse … interesting from the number of exercises practised upon it.
6. Wooden shoe: a shoe made of wood, as the French SABOT; in the 18th c. popularly taken as typical of the miserable condition of the French peasantry.
1607. [see SABOT 1].
1701. De Foe, Trueborn Eng., I. 268. Two hundred Thousand Pair of Wooden Shooes, Who God be thanked, had nothing left to lose.
1715. Addison, Drummer, Prol. 8. Round-heads and Wooden-shoes are standing Jokes.
1766. Goldsm., Vicar W., xix. What! give up liberty, property, and, as the Gazetteer says, lie down to be saddled with wooden shoes!
1807–8. Syd. Smith, Plymley’s Lett., iii. (1852), 29. He calls all hands on deck; talks to them of king, country, glory, sweethearts, gin, French prison, wooden shoes, Old England, and hearts of oak.
1818. Scott, Rob Roy, ix. King William … our immortal deliverer from papists and pretenders, and wooden shoes and warming pans.
1859. W. S. Coleman, Woodlands (1862), 62. In France great numbers of the peculiar wooden shoes, called ‘sabots,’ are made of Alder.
7. Wooden spoon: a spoon made of wood; spec. one presented by custom at Cambridge to the last of the Junior Optimes, i.e., the lowest of those taking honours in the Mathematical Tripos; hence, this position in the examination, or the person who takes it. Also in extended use, referring to the lowest of a list or set in other connections.
‘At Yale, formerly, the student who took the last appointment in the Junior Exhibition; later, the most popular student in a class’ (Cent. Dict.).
1803. Gradus ad Cantab., 137. Wooden Spoon, for wooden heads:… the lowest of the Junior Optimes.
1820. Byron, Juan, III. cx. Sure my invention must be down at zero, And I grown one of many ‘wooden spoons’ Of verse (the name with which we Cantabs please To dub the last of honours in degrees).
1858. Earl Malmesbury, Mem. (1884), II. 127. The ‘wooden spoon’ which is given to the Minister in the House of Commons who has been in the fewest divisions.
1883. in Standard, 20 June, 2/7. There was no opposition to the presentation of the time-honoured ‘Wooden Spoon.’
1900. Westm. Gaz., 19 March, 8/2. The international matches … have now all been played,… Ireland, who won the championship last year … have only 1 point, and take the ‘wooden spoon.’
8. Wooden walls (after (ξύλινον τεῖχος, Herodotus vii. 141): ships or shipping as a defensive force. (Rarely in sing.)
1598. W. Phillip, trans. Linschoten, To Rdr. Our Wodden Walles (as Themistocles called the Ships of Athens).
1598. Stow, Surv., 468 [484]. Ships … bee the wodden walles for defence of our Realme.
1625. Sanderson, Serm., Ad Mag., iii. (1681), 129. Our carnal confidence and security in the strength of our wooden and watry walls.
c. 1645. in Wood’s Life, etc. (O.H.S.), II. 55. Your stone and wooden wall Shall not defend you, but shall then Begin to sink and fall.
1750. Beawes, Lex Mercat. (1752), 248. Our wooden walls are our bulwarks and redoubts, to which we owe our safety.
1849. Longf., Building of Ship, 69. Every climate, every soil, Must bring its tribute, great or small, And help to build the wooden wall!
1862. Gen. P. Thompson, in Bradford Advertiser, 26 April, 6/1. Your wooden walls wherein was your trust, have become fit only for firewood, or at most for transports.
9. In various special collocations: † wooden bridle, a fanciful name for a rudder; † wooden casement, cravat, slang or jocular names for the pillory (cf. hempen cravat s.v. CRAVAT sb. 1 b); † wooden dagger, the dagger of lath worn by Vice in the old moralities; † wooden doublet jocular, a coffin; wooden island (see quot.); wooden isle, a rhetorical designation for a ship; wooden leg, an artificial leg made of wood; also fig.; wooden mare = wooden horse, 5 b; wooden pear, an Australian tree, Xylomelum pyriforme, bearing hard inversely pear-shaped seed-vessels; † wooden ruff = wooden cravat (see RUFF sb.2 4); wooden surtout slang, = wooden doublet; wooden tongue, an infectious disease of cattle and horses, in which the tongue is enlarged and hardened; wooden ware, articles, esp. household utensils, made of wood (sometimes written with hyphen or as one word; cf. earthenware); wooden wedding U.S., the fifth anniversary of one’s wedding, on which it is appropriate to give presents made of wood; wooden wedge Cambridge Univ. (see quot. and WEDGE sb. 8).
1614. Sylvester, Parl. Vertues Royall, 705. A skilfull Pilot,… Her winged manage rightly to command With hempen Rains, and *wooden Bridle.
1685. Roxb. Ball. (1885), V. 606. To be pelted with Eggs thro’ a lewd *wooden-casement.
1676. Poor Robin’s Intell., 4–11 April, 2/1. We hear of none this bout that are to wear the *Wooden Crevat.
1589. Nashe, Martins Months Minde, Wks. (Grosart), I. 181. The *woodden dagger may not bee worne at the backe, where S. Paules sword, hangs by the side.
1599. Shaks., Hen. V., IV. iv. 77. This roaring diuell i’th olde play [sc. Pistol], that euerie one may payre his nayles with a woodden dagger.
a. 1625. Fletcher, Noble Gentl., V. i. According to his merits he should wear, A guarded coat, and a great wooden dagger.
1761. [F. Forrest], Ways to kill Care, Ded. p. ii. Where to find a guardian for the bawling brat, in case papa … should suddenly tumble into his *wooden doublet.
1808. Ashe, Trav. Amer., III. 310. *Wooden Islands, are places, where … large quantities of drift-wood have … been arrested and matted together in different parts of the river.
1603. Chettle, Eng. Mourn. Garm., E 3. The inhabitants of those *wooden Iles, are worthy Sea-men.
1582. Aldeburgh Rec., in N. & Q., 12th Ser. VII. 366/2. Pd to ye Joyner for a *wooden Legge … xviiid.
a. 1663. Killigrew, Parson’s Wedd., I. iii. (1664), 81. She hates a man with all his Limbs; a Wooden-leg, a Crutch … wins her heart.
1668. R. Steele, Husbandman’s Calling, i. (1672), 7. Every man should be of some use in the body politick … else he is but an artificial member, a meer wooden leg.
1709. Steele, Tatler, No. 48, ¶ 2. I was the old Soldier who … pretended that I had broken my Wooden-Leg.
1887. Besant, The World went, ii. His right leg had been lost in action, and was replaced by a wooden leg.
1819. *Wooden mare [see MARE1 2 b].
1829. Scott, Old Mort., ix. note. The Punishment of riding the wooden mare was … one of the … cruel modes of enforcing military discipline.
1889. Maiden, Usef. Pl. Australia, 615. Xylomelum pyriforme … Native Pear. *Wooden Pear.
1865. Slang Dict., *Wooden surtout, a coffin, generally spoken of as a wooden surtout with nails for buttons.
1884. Klein, Micro-organisms & Dis., xvi. 148. In cattle the disease [actinomycosis] manifests itself by firm tumours in the jaw,… and particularly by a great enlargement and induration of the tongue—*wooden tongue.
1914. Christian World, 12 March, 3/2. A Haverfordwest saddler has died from the disease known as ‘wooden tongue.’ It occurs occasionally among horses, but is extremely rare in human beings.
1727. Earbery, trans. Burnet’s St. Dead, 20. If a Man should build a fine and magnificent Seat, and fill the Inside thereof … with … *Wooden-ware and the most sordid Furniture.
1884. Sargent, Rep. Forests N. Amer., 495. Large quantities of cooperage stock, woodenware, handles, spools, bobbins, etc., are manufactured.
1888. Girl’s Own Paper, 24 March, 407/3. In America, too, the fifth anniversary of the marriage ceremony is known as the *‘wooden-wedding.’
1860. Slang Dict. (ed. 2), *Wooden wedge, the last name in the classical honours list at Cambridge.
III. 10. Combinations, as (in sense 1) wooden-barred, -hooped, -hulled, -legged, -pinned, -seated, -shoed, -soled, -walled adjs.; (in sense 2 a) wooden-faced, -featured adjs.; also † wooden-footed a., wooden-shoed; woodenhead, a stupid person, a blockhead; wooden-headed a., having a ‘wooden head,’ stupid (hence wooden-headedness); wooden-weary a., stupefied with weariness.
1854. Poultry Chron., II. 23/1. Every one of our pens was made with an open *wooden-barred back.
1605. Camden, Rem., 78. By this name [sc. Dorcas], the Amorous Knights were wont to salute freckled … *wodden-faced wenches.
1863. Miss Braddon, Eleanor’s Vict., xxx. His nieces,… whose wooden-faced stolidity had … something … suggestive of being listened to and stared at by two Dutch clocks.
1848. Dickens, Dombey, vii. A *wooden-featured … Major.
1670. G. H., Hist. Cardinals, I. I. 12. I heard a certain *wooden footed [orig. zoccolante] Frier Preach.
1831. Carlyle, Lett. to Wife, 8 Sept. I … saw the coronation procession, which seventy or eighty thousand *woodenheads besides were looking at.
1905. ‘John Oxenham,’ Giant Circumstance, x. in Chambers’s Jrnl., 11 Feb., 165/1. Is it true that that woodenhead placed you under arrest?
1865. Sat. Rev., 4 Feb., 143/1. That still more *wooden-headed creature, a man who fails to appreciate his value.
1850. Dickens, Lett. to Mrs. Watson, 14 Dec. For which *wooden-headedness the Child shall be taken to task.
1906. A. G. Bradley, in Macm. Mag., April, 454. It was the thing to carry a large *wooden-hooped net on a pole six feet long.
1883. Whitaker’s Alm., 445/1. Of the *wooden-hulled vessels the largest is the Lissa, 6,030 tons, and 61/4-in. armour.
1840. Thackeray, Shabby-genteel Story, i. A stout old *wooden-legged Scotch regimental surgeon.
1895. Kipling, 2nd Jungle Bk., Undertakers, 86. Square-sailed, *wooden-pinned barges.
1890. ‘R. Boldrewood,’ Col. Reformer, xxv. The *wooden-seated American chairs.
1800. *Wooden shoed [see SABOT 1].
1840. Thackeray, Paris Sk.-bk., Cartouche. Virtue … may exist among wooden-shoed Papists as well as honest Church-of-England men.
1810. Milman, in Biogr. Sk., i. (1900), 18. *Wooden-soled shoes.
1910. Crockett, Dew of Youth, I. ii. 10. Tramp of wooden-soled clogs.
1891. C. James, Rom. Rigmarole, 23. I walked on between the tall, straight stems…. A sudden turn in the *wooden-walled alley … brought me face to face with a great, still lake.
1888. Doughty, Trav. Arabia Deserta, I. 427. Hounds … *wooden-weary with long watch.
Hence (chiefly fig.) Wooden, Woodenize vbs. (nonce-wds.), trans. to render wooden; Woodenly adv., in a wooden manner; Woodenness, wooden quality or style; Woodeny a., of a wooden quality.
1641. Milton, Animadv., Wks. 1851, III. 239. How little wee neede feare that the unguilding of our Prelates will prove the *woodening of our Priests.
1877. Sinclair, Mount, 235. When the poetic vigour was enfeebled and *woodenised by age.
1653. Dorothy Osborne, Lett. (1888), 63. You would have both pitied and laughed at me if you could have seen how *woodenly I entertained the widow.
a. 1734. North, Lives (1826), I. 361. To have some sport in seeing how woodenly he would excuse himself.
1881. D. C. Murray, Joseph’s Coat, I. xi. 262. Sitting by the fireside,… looking, woodenly respectable as of old.
1894. W. C. Russell, Good Ship ‘Mohock,’ i. 15. The mechanical hireling … who does his duty woodenly.
1872. Daily News, 30 July, 3/4. *Woodenness is a characteristic which cannot with truth be said to be banished from the handling of the Aldershot force as a division in the field.
1886. Spectator, 6 Nov., Lit. Suppl. 1505. The book is altogether very stirring and readable, notwithstanding faults of woodenness, which are inevitable whenever authors do not make their studies from life.
1888. Sweet, Hist. Eng. Sounds, p. xi. The ‘woodenness’ which then characterized German philology.
1864. Morning Star, 19 Sept. Some of the horses … are *woodeny old screws without a pace in them beyond the regulation amble.
1885. Mrs. C. L. Pirkis, Lady Lovelace, III. xxxviii. 19. Making … hard woodeny angles against the … leaden sky.
1898. P. Manson, Trop. Diseases, xii. 210. Woodeny hardness [of the heart-muscle].
1905. Sat. Rev., 1 April, 415/2. He [the capercailzie] … gives vent to a number of peculiar sounds…. First comes several hard woodeny clicks.
