wudu

Forms

wudu m (strong u-stem; genitive singular wuda, nominative plural wuda)^[1] Early form widu in the Épinal and Erfurt glossaries, wudu in the Corpus Glossary.^[2] Kentish wioda (dative) in a charter of 858.^[3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-West Germanic *widu (“forest, tree, wood”), from Proto-Germanic *widuz.^[1][2] The Proto-Germanic noun is continued in Old Norse viðr (“tree, forest, wood”), Old Saxon widu and Old High German witu (“wood”).^[5][6] Outside Germanic it matches Old Irish fid (“tree, wood”) and Welsh gwŷdd (“trees”), which Orel treats as the same word.^[5][1]

Köbler sets up the noun Proto-Indo-European *widʰu- (“tree, wood”) and connects it, with a query, with a root "to separate".^[7][6] Wiktionary's reconstruction page takes the same line, tracing it to Proto-Indo-European *h₁weydʰh₁- (“to separate, split”), with a sense development from "land set apart" to "forest", and compares Lithuanian vidùs (“middle”).^[1] Kroonen derives the adjective wīd "wide" from that root and suggests that the word for wood may belong with it too.^[8]

The form widu is the older one: after ⟨w⟩, ⟨i⟩ became ⟨u⟩ before a back vowel in the next syllable, a special kind of back umlaut.^[2] The Épinal and Erfurt glossaries still have ⟨widu⟩, the Corpus Glossary ⟨wudu⟩.^[9][2] It is one of the few nouns still inflected as a u-stem in early Old English.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest securely dated record is a Kentish charter of King Æthelberht of 858, which survives in a single sheet held to be contemporary: the grant excepts the marshes, the saltern at Faversham "& butan ðem wioda ðe to ðem sealtern limpð", "and except the wood that belongs to the saltern".^[3][4] Here the word means a stand of trees, a wood that supplied fuel.^[3][11]

Semantic evolution

Bosworth and Toller divide the senses into growing wood (a tree, the trees of a place), felled wood as timber and fuel, and a wood or forest.^[11] In the poems wudu also stands for things made of wood: a ship, as in Beowulf 216 and 298, and a spear-shaft (398), and in The Dream of the Rood the Cross.^[12][13] In the glosses it renders Latin "saltus" and "silva".^[7] It is very common in the bounds of charters, in names such as wuduford, wuduland and wuduweg.^[14] As the first part of compounds it could mean "wild": wudubucca "wild goat", wuduhunig "wild honey".^[15]

The word lived on as Middle English wode, with both "living tree" and "wood" senses, now English wood.^[16][15]

Timeline

• 858 – wioda, a wood belonging to a saltern, in a Kentish charter surviving in a contemporary copy.^[3][4]
• 889 – ciolmundes wioda in the bounds of a Rochester charter, held to be an original.^[17][4]
• 890×897 – in the Pastoral Care (Hatton 20).^[18][4]
• s. x med. – trees that grow best in their own soil in the Old English Boethius.^[19][11]
• s. x/xi – wudu for a ship and for a spear in the Beowulf manuscript.^[20][12]
• c. 1000 – the wild animals ðe on wudum eardiað in Ælfric's Hexameron.^[1]

Meanings

Noun

1. wood as the substance of growing trees; a tree.^[11][7]
2. felled wood, timber, firewood.^[11][13]
3. a wood, forest, grove.^[21][22]
4. (poetic) something made of wood: a ship; a spear; the Cross.^[12][13]

Word family

• wuduweard
• wudufugol
• wuduhunig
• wudubucca
• bordwudu
• gamenwudu
• holtwudu
• sǣwudu
• sundwudu
• campwudu

Descendants

• Middle English wude (→ English wood; Scots wude; Scots wuid)^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Ringe, Don; Taylor, Ann (2014), The Development of Old English, A Linguistic History of English II, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 322
3. ^ a b c d The Electronic Sawyer: Online Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon Charters, revised ed. by S. E. Kelly and R. Rushforth, King's College London / University of Cambridge, esawyer.lib.cam.ac.uk, p. S 328
4. ^ a b c d e Healey, Antonette diPaolo; Price Wilkin, John; Xiang, Xin, eds. (2009), Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus, Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Project
5. ^ a b Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 462
6. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Germanisches Wörterbuch, 5th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling, p. s.v. *widuz
7. ^ a b c Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Altenglisches Wörterbuch, 4th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling, p. s.v. widu
8. ^ Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 584
9. ^ Ringe, Don; Taylor, Ann (2014), The Development of Old English, A Linguistic History of English II, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 320
10. ^ Ringe, Don; Taylor, Ann (2014), The Development of Old English, A Linguistic History of English II, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 385
11. ^ a b c d e Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement, p. 1277
12. ^ a b c Fulk, R. D.; Bjork, Robert E.; Niles, John D., eds. (2008), Klaeber's Beowulf and The Fight at Finnsburg, 4th ed., Toronto: University of Toronto Press (glossary), p. s.v. wudu
13. ^ a b c Clark Hall, J. R. (1960), A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, 4th ed., with a supplement by H. D. Meritt, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 423
14. ^ Middendorff, H. (1902), Altenglisches Flurnamenbuch, Halle: Niemeyer, p. 154
15. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
16. ^ Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
17. ^ The Electronic Sawyer: Online Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon Charters, revised ed. by S. E. Kelly and R. Rushforth, King's College London / University of Cambridge, esawyer.lib.cam.ac.uk, p. S 1276
18. ^ Gneuss, Helmut; Lapidge, Michael (2014), Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, p. 499
19. ^ Gneuss, Helmut; Lapidge, Michael (2014), Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, p. 296
20. ^ Gneuss, Helmut; Lapidge, Michael (2014), Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, p. 344
21. ^ Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement, p. Suppl. 750
22. ^ Sweet, Henry (1896), The Student's Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 235