Etymologically
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woodland

This is the current revision of this entry, as edited by bogdan on 26 October 2026 at 03:19. This address is a permanent link to this version.
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Pronunciation

  • /ˈwʊd.lənd/[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English wodeland, also wodelond,[2][3] inherited from Old English wuduland, also spelled wudulond,[4][5][6] a compound from Old English wudu (“wood”) + land (“land”),[5][2] the ancestors of wood and land.[7][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Land covered with trees, a wooded region or piece of ground: recorded in Old English charter bounds, which the OED of 1989 dated 869.[7][9] Bosworth–Toller glosses the Old English word as woodland, forest land or forest.[4]

Semantic evolution

The noun has kept its first meaning since Old English;[7][10] in Layamon's Brut a wild boar is found in the wodelonde.[4][3] Its attributive use, of things belonging to or living in woodland, is dated 1351–2 by the OED of 1989,[9][10] to the mid-14th century by Etymonline[2] and to the 14th century by Merriam-Webster,[5] while the revised OED begins it in about 1537;[7] the sense "wooded, consisting of woodland" follows in 1577.[7] Johnson (1755) defined it simply as woods, or ground covered with woods.[11] In archaeology, since 1909 in the revised OED (1917 in the OED of 1989), Woodland names a hunting and farming culture of the wooded east of North America, from about 1000 BC;[7][9] the American Heritage Dictionary explains the name by the woodland regions where the culture flourished.[12] In Australia the word also means open eucalyptus forest without a dense canopy.[13] The word is frequent in English place names, such as Woodland in Devon (Wodelonde, 1328).[14][15]

Timeline

  • 869 – land covered with trees, in charter bounds.[9][7]
  • 1351–2 – attributive use, of or living in woodland.[9]
  • c. 1537 – adjective, of or belonging to woodland.[7]
  • 1577 – consisting of woodland, wooded.[7]
  • 1909 – Archaeology: the Woodland culture of eastern North America.[7]

Meanings

Noun

  1. Land covered with trees and shrubs; a forest or wooded area: The village was surrounded by oak woodland.[5][7][8]
  2. A plot of wooded land kept and used together with a farm.[5]
  3. (Australia) Open forest, mostly of eucalyptus, without a dense canopy.[13]

Adjective

  1. Growing, living or found in woodland: woodland birds.[5][7]
  2. Of, relating to or consisting of woodland.[5][7]
  3. (archaeology) Woodland: of a hunting and farming culture of eastern North America from about 1000 BC.[7][5]

Word family

  • woodlander

References

  1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  3. ^ a b Stratmann, Francis Henry (1891), A Middle-English Dictionary, revised by Henry Bradley, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  4. ^ a b c Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  6. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  8. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  9. ^ a b c d e Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  10. ^ a b Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
  11. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  12. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  13. ^ a b Moore, Bruce, ed. (2004), The Australian Oxford Dictionary, 2nd ed., Melbourne: Oxford University Press
  14. ^ Ekwall, Eilert (1960), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names, 4th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  15. ^ Mills, A. D.; Room, Adrian (2002), "A Dictionary of British Place-Names", in The Oxford Names Companion, Oxford: Oxford University Press