Wooded

How to spell wooded

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce wooded

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does wooded mean?

1. adjectiveCovered with growing trees; having many trees.

Wooded in a sentence

• The cottage sits on a wooded hillside above the river.

• A wooded trail led from the car park to the lake.

Where does wooded come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is built on the native English noun 'wood', which descends from the Old English 'wudu', meaning a tree, timber, or a stand of growing trees, and which has cousins across the Germanic languages. To 'wudu' English added the suffix '-ed', the same ending seen in adjectives like 'bearded' or 'spotted', where it carries the sense of 'furnished with' or 'covered with' rather than marking a past tense. The result, 'wooded', describes land that is clothed in trees, and it has been used in that descriptive way for centuries. Because the root vowel is short, the spelling keeps a single 'o' doubled into 'oo' and ends in '-ded', which can momentarily trip writers who pause over how many letters the modest little word really needs.

How the word is built

• wood (forest, trees)
• -ed (adjectival suffix meaning 'having' or 'covered with')