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woody

adjective · noun

Simple meaning

Made of wood, or having wood-like properties.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

wuudee

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US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈwʊdi

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

adjective

  1. Made of wood, or having wood-like properties.

  2. botany

    Non-herbaceous.

    “Subshrubs, shrubs, trees and lianas are all woody plants.”

  3. Covered in woods; wooded.

noun

  1. An early station wagon or estate car in which the rear portion of the car's bodywork is made of wood, often associated with Southern California surfing culture.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
B1 · Intermediate (estimated)
Frequency
Moderately Common
Typical Use
Neutral / general English

Word Aura™

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More ways to use woody

  • “The old cabin had a pleasant woody smell inside.”

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

woody plantwoody specieswoody fibrewoody vegetationwoody debriswoody tissuewoody stemwoody material

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Similar Words, What’s the Difference?

Close in meaning, but not always interchangeable.

  • deal

    Made of deal.

  • wooden

    Made of wood.

  • ashen

    Made from the wood of the ash-tree.

  • bamboo

    Made of the wood of the bamboo.

  • oak

    Having a rich brown color, like that of oak wood.

Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • woody allennounCompound term

    United States filmmaker and comic actor (1935-).

  • woody nightshadenounCompound term

    Poisonous perennial Old World vine having violet flowers and oval coral-red berries.

  • woody pearnounCompound term

    Tree bearing pear-shaped fruit with a thick woody epicarp.

  • woody plantnounCompound term

    A plant having hard lignified tissues or woody parts especially stems.

Related Words

Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

adjective

Sense: made of wood or or having wood-like properties

oaklignifiedRarewoodenbambooashenoaken

noun

Sense: early station wagon

dealArchaicbirch

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API (CC BY-SA 3.0). Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.