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PlainSpell

woad

/woʊd/noun, verb

woad is a noun meaning “The plant Isatis tinctoria” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled W-O-A-D, and it appears about once in every 13 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of woad is woads.

What does woad mean?

noun

  1. 1

    The plant Isatis tinctoria.

  2. 2

    The blue vat dye made from the leaves of the plant through partial drying and fermentation.

verb

  1. 1

    To plant or cultivate woad.

  2. 2

    To dye with woad.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce woad?

  • UK /wəʊd/
  • US /woʊd/

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-woad.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of woad

  • woads plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • woading participle, present
  • woaded participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is woad?

Woad appears about once in every 13 million words in written English, the 110,368th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Woad in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchguède (Isatis tinctoria), pastel (blue dye made from the plant)
GermanFärberwaid, Waid (Isatis tinctoria)
Portuguesepastel-dos-tintureiros (Isatis tinctoria)
Spanishyerba pastel, glasto (Isatis tinctoria)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does woad come from?

From Middle English wode, from Old English wād (“woad”), from Proto-West Germanic *waiʀd, from Proto-Germanic *waizdaz (“woad”), from Proto-Indo-European *woydʰ-. Cognate with Old Frisian wēd (“woad”), Dutch wede (“woad”), German Waid (“woad”), and with French guède, Italian guado (“woad”) (both borrowed from Frankish). See also weed.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).