| / English Dictionary |
WOODY
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
Irregular inflected forms: woodier , woodiest
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Made hard like wood as the result of the deposition of lignin in the cell walls
Classified under:
Similar:
hard (resisting weight or pressure)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Abounding in trees
Example:
a woody area near the highway
Synonyms:
arboraceous; arboreous; woodsy; woody
Classified under:
Similar:
wooded (covered with growing trees and bushes etc)
Derivation:
woodiness (the quality of abounding in trees)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Made of or containing or resembling wood
Example:
a woody taste
Classified under:
Adjectives
Similar:
ashen (made of wood of the ash tree)
beechen (consisting of or made of wood of the beech tree)
birch; birchen; birken (consisting of or made of wood of the birch tree)
cedarn (consisting of or made of cedar)
ligneous (consisting of or containing lignin or xylem)
oaken (consisting of or made of wood of the oak tree)
suffrutescent (of a plant; having a woody base that does not die down each year)
wooden (made or consisting of (entirely or in part) or employing wood)
Antonym:
nonwoody (not woody; not consisting of or resembling wood)
Derivation:
wood (the hard fibrous lignified substance under the bark of trees)
Context examples:
Cattle-grazing has led to the takeover of grasslands by shrubs and other woody vegetation.
(Sleeping sands of the Kalahari awaken after more than 10,000 years, NSF)
The remainder was shut off by knolls of old trees, or luxuriant plantations, and the steep woody hills rising behind, to give it shelter, were beautiful even in the leafless month of March.
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
Brines in the lake bottoms retain DBC whose woody signature indicates the source is likely to have been burning — such as wildfires and other natural events — at lower latitudes as many as 2,500 years ago or more.
(Antarctic lakes are a repository for ancient soot, NSF)
We pulled easily, by Silver's directions, not to weary the hands prematurely, and after quite a long passage, landed at the mouth of the second river—that which runs down a woody cleft of the Spy-glass.
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
It was a large, handsome stone building, standing well on rising ground, and backed by a ridge of high woody hills; and in front, a stream of some natural importance was swelled into greater, but without any artificial appearance.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
The scenes in its neighbourhood, Charmouth, with its high grounds and extensive sweeps of country, and still more, its sweet, retired bay, backed by dark cliffs, where fragments of low rock among the sands, make it the happiest spot for watching the flow of the tide, for sitting in unwearied contemplation; the woody varieties of the cheerful village of Up Lyme; and, above all, Pinny, with its green chasms between romantic rocks, where the scattered forest trees and orchards of luxuriant growth, declare that many a generation must have passed away since the first partial falling of the cliff prepared the ground for such a state, where a scene so wonderful and so lovely is exhibited, as may more than equal any of the resembling scenes of the far-famed Isle of Wight: these places must be visited, and visited again, to make the worth of Lyme understood.
(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)
After a short silence, he told me, he did not know how I would take what he was going to say: that in the last general assembly, when the affair of the Yahoos was entered upon, the representatives had taken offence at his keeping a Yahoo (meaning myself) in his family, more like a Houyhnhnm than a brute animal; that he was known frequently to converse with me, as if he could receive some advantage or pleasure in my company; that such a practice was not agreeable to reason or nature, or a thing ever heard of before among them; the assembly did therefore exhort him either to employ me like the rest of my species, or command me to swim back to the place whence I came: that the first of these expedients was utterly rejected by all the Houyhnhnms who had ever seen me at his house or their own; for they alleged, that because I had some rudiments of reason, added to the natural pravity of those animals, it was to be feared I might be able to seduce them into the woody and mountainous parts of the country, and bring them in troops by night to destroy the Houyhnhnms’ cattle, as being naturally of the ravenous kind, and averse from labour.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Its windows opening to the ground, admitted a most refreshing view of the high woody hills behind the house, and of the beautiful oaks and Spanish chestnuts which were scattered over the intermediate lawn.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE
