woods
/wʊdz/noun, verb
A densely tree-covered area, usually smaller than a forest
From O.English, from Proto-West Germanic and Proto-Germanic wood (Wood).
Lineage
Germanicnot directly attested
Selected stage
Modern English
woods — A densely tree-covered area, usually smaller than a forest
The story
Woods are tree-covered places, often smaller than forests. The word is the plural of wood, whose Old English forms wudu and widu meant ‘wood, forest, grove; tree; timber.’ It came through Middle English wode from earlier Germanic forms; its spelling developed in the same way as wool. English uses woods especially for a wooded area, and it usually takes a plural verb: Robert Frost’s 1923 poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” begins its famous description, “The woods are lovely, dark and deep.”