Wad

How to spell wad

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce wad

What does wad mean?

1. nounA small compact mass of soft material, or a thick bundle of folded paper or banknotes.
2. verbTo compress or roll soft material into a small dense lump.

Wad in a sentence

• noun

  She pressed a wad of cotton wool against the small cut.

• verb

  She would wad the tissue and stuff it into the gap.

• noun

  He pulled a thick wad of banknotes from his coat pocket.

• verb

  Workers often wad old newspaper to pack fragile parcels.

Where does wad come from?

Language of origin: Other

Wad appears in English from around the sixteenth century, originally describing a small soft mass of fibrous material such as tow, paper, or hay used for stuffing or packing. Its ultimate source is genuinely uncertain, which is unusual for such a common word: it may be connected to a Medieval Latin form wadda meaning a bundle of stuffing, and it has lookalike relatives in several Germanic languages, such as Dutch watten and Swedish vadd, all referring to padding or cotton wool. From the idea of padding came the sense of a plug of material rammed into an old firearm to hold the charge in place, and from there the modern senses of any compact lump squeezed together and, more recently and informally, a thick roll of folded banknotes. The related word 'wadding', the soft padding used in quilting and packaging, comes from the same root. Because the word is short and the vowel is a plain open sound, it rarely causes spelling trouble.

How the word is built

• wad (single root, of uncertain origin; meaning a soft compressed mass)