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Humans have been making objects out of wood since before there even was an English language, but the adjectival use of "wood" didn't come into being until the 14th century, and "wooden" didn't appear until the 16th. (The word wood has ancient roots, but it originally existed only as a noun.) In Middle English, the adjective of choice was "tree" or "treen," as in a "tree vessel" or "treen shoes." "Treen" in turn came from the Old English word trēowen, from the noun "trēow" ("tree") and the suffix -en, which was used to indicate that something was composed of a certain material. As far as we know, no one ever used "treen" figuratively to describe things that are stiff as a board, but "wooden" was put to broader use soon after it was first recorded.
Examples of wooden in a Sentence
Macie Stump, Southern Living, 17 Feb. 2025
When Most Holy Trinity opened in 1851, for the German Catholic church in nearby Williamsburg, Brooklyn, nearly all the graves were marked with wooden crosses.
—Maria Cramer, New York Times, 16 Feb. 2025
Featuring knit and crochet items, baby quilts, floral arrangements, jewelry and wooden crafts.
—Joe Rassel, Orlando Sentinel, 13 Feb. 2025
The team is now working to recreate mummy scents so that museum visitors in Egypt and Slovenia can have the opportunity to sniff the unguents used in embalming or the odor of aging wooden sarcophagi—aromas that are otherwise trapped in time or within a museum case.
—Sarah Everts, Smithsonian Magazine, 13 Feb. 2025
See All Example Sentences for wooden
Cite this Entry
“Wooden.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wooden. Accessed 3 Mar. 2025.
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