A Dictionary of Cont..

wonted energy and he is wont io act with
energy, where wonted is used only before a
noun and wont only after a form of the verb
to be and before an infinitive.
Out of this limited use of two words, some
new verb forms have developed. There is a
present tense, singular and plural, as in he wonis
to act wifh energy and they wont to act with
energy, and a past tense form, in those days
he wonted to act with energy. The verb has no
other forms, and these forms are very rare.
Although they are standard, they are decidedly
artificial.
This verb should not be confused with want,
or with won’t, which means “will not.”
wood; forest; woods. A forest is an extensive
wooded area, preserving some of its primitive
wildness and usually having game or wild
animals in it (This is the forest primeval, the
murmuring pines and the hemlocks, The National
Forests are among our most valuable
possessions). In England forest is applied to an
unenclosed tract, regardless of whether it has
trees, used as a game preserve. The famous
New Forest was not wholly wooded and there
are deer forests in the Scottish Highland where
there are few or no trees.
Wood or woods describes a wooded tract
smaller than a forest and resembling one, but
less wild in character and nearer to civilization.
Woods, when it means a grove of trees,
usually takes a plural verb, as in the woods are
full of them and there are woods near the house.
But it is sometimes treated as a singular, as in
there is a woods near the house. This is acceptable
in the United States but not in Great
Britain, where the singular form a wood is required,
as in there is a wood near the house. In
the United States the singular form, a wood, is
a purely literary word. It suggests a romantic
and poetic place utterly unlike any stand of
trees in this country. The feeling that woods is
singular is so strong in the United States that
it has produced the adjective woodsy, as in
woodsy and wild and lonesome. In Great
Britain the adjective is always woody, as in a
woody glen.
wood for the trees. As a figurative description
of someone who is so taken up with details that
he cannot see or loses sight of the whole, to
say that he can’t see the wood for the trees is
to employ a clicht. It ha-s been in use as a
proverb for over four hundred years and it is
more than two hundred years since Swift listed
it as a clichC.
wooded; wooden; woodsy; woody. Wooded means
covered with or abounding in woods or trees
(Heavily wooded banks were an important feature
of flood control). Wooden means consisting
of or made of wood (The wooden steps of
the back porch had been painted battleship
gray). Used figuratively, wooden means stiff,
ungainly, or awkward (A wooden Indian is
wooden in every sense of the word. The recruit
pave the captain a wooden salute). It may also
561 word
mean without spirit or animation (The only response
to his encouragement was a wooden
stare), or dull and stupid (These wooden-headed
louts don’t seem able IO understand the simplest
siatemenis!). There are several American idiomatic
expressions containing wooden, such as
the dreary, rustic jocularity, don’t lake any
wooden nickels. Woodsy is an American word
meaning of, like, suggestive of, or associated
with the woods, sylvan (Ship Island region was
as woodsy and tenantless as ever-Mark Twain).
Woody has the special meanings of resembling
wood (The center of the stalk was a thick,
woody substance), or sounding as wood sounds
when it is struck (The piano had a dull, woody
tone). It shares with wooded the meaning of
abounding in woods (Between the hills and the
river there was an extensive woody area) but,
unlike wooded, it is not qualified by an adverb
(a heavily wooded area, a woody area).
woof; warp; web; weft. All of these words refer
to weaving. The warp is a set of yarns placed
lengthwise in the loom. The yarns which travel
from selvage to selvage in a loom, interlacing
with the warp, are called collectively the woof
or weft Sometimes woof is used more loosely
in the sense of texture (There was an awful
rainbow once in heaven:/ We know her woof,
her texture; she is given/ In the dull catalogue
of common things-Keats).
Something formed as by weaving or interweaving
of warp and woof is a web (Penelope’s
web was a means of delaying the acceptance of
a proposal).
woolen; woollen; woolly. Woolen (or especially in
England, woollen) means made or consisting of
wool (The Western Isles of Scotland are famous
for their woollen goods). Woolly may also mean
consisting of wool or having the property or
feeling or appearance of wool, but even in this
sense the wool is understood to be attached to
its producer or what would seem to be its producer,
unlike woolen which refers to a detached
material (My father gave me a woolly Shropshire
lamb on my seventh birthday. In the most
lucid brains we come upon nests of woolly
caterpillars). Keats’s and silent was the flock
in woolly fold is an exceptional use. Figuratively,
woolly suggests blurred, imprecise (This
woolly, maggotty metaphysics . . . The third
drink made his speech woolly). In the United
States the Old West was called, colloquially,
wild and woolly because of its rough atmosphere.
In England woolly is used colloquially
as a noun to describe a sweater or other light
outergarment of wool; in America it is used, or
was when the object existed in the plural, to
describe an undergarment of wool (Ten below!
Boy, you’d better puf on your woollies).
word of mouth. By word of mouth is a wordy
way of saying “orally” or “verbally” or “he told
me so.” It is redundant and stilted, and to be
avoided.
word’s as good as his bond. To say, as an assurance
that someone can be relied on, that he will