Word of the Day

: August 9, 2018

weald

noun WEELD

What It Means

1 : a heavily wooded area : forest

2 : a wild or uncultivated usually upland region

weald in Context

"With food, terroir remains the best term to define how variations in landscape and climate in a place give a region a certain identity. This is aired strikingly, with Toby Glanville's photographs of the estuary and marshes, weald and orchards—a soothing greyness, an atmosphere of English Nordic to get you into the mood and cook Harris's recipes, mostly easy to make." — Rose Prince, The Spectator, 18 Nov. 2017

"Challenger's house was on the very edge of the hill, and from its southern face, in which was the study window, one looked across the vast stretch of the weald to where the gentle curves of the South Downs formed an undulating horizon." — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Poison Belt, 1913

Did You Know?

If weald were a tree, it would have many annual rings. It has been in use as a general word for "forest" since the days of Old English, and it has also long been used, in its capitalized form, as a geographic name for a once-heavily forested region of southeast England. Weald is also often capitalized today when used to refer to wooded areas like the Weald of Kent and the Weald of Sussex in England. In time, the word branched out to designate any wild and uncultivated upland regions. A related word is wold, meaning "an upland plain or stretch of rolling land."