WOODY (woodier, woodiest)

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

Irregular inflected forms: woodier    , woodiest   

 Dictionary entry overview: What does woody mean? 

• WOODY (adjective)
  The adjective WOODY has 3 senses:

1. made of or containing or resembling wood

2. abounding in trees

3. made hard like wood as the result of the deposition of lignin in the cell walls

  Familiarity information: WOODY used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• WOODY (adjective)

Comparative: woodier   
Superlative: woodiest   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Made of or containing or resembling wood

Context example:

a woody taste

Similar:

ashen (made of wood of the ash tree)

beechen (consisting of or made of wood of the beech tree)

birch; birchen; birken (consisting of or made of wood of the birch tree)

cedarn (consisting of or made of cedar)

ligneous (consisting of or containing lignin or xylem)

oaken (consisting of or made of wood of the oak tree)

suffrutescent (of a plant; having a woody base that does not die down each year)

wooden (made or consisting of (entirely or in part) or employing wood)

Antonym:

nonwoody (not woody; not consisting of or resembling wood)

Derivation:

wood (the hard fibrous lignified substance under the bark of trees)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Abounding in trees

Synonyms:

arboraceous; arboreous; woodsy; woody

Context example:

a woody area near the highway

Similar:

wooded (covered with growing trees and bushes etc)

Derivation:

woodiness (the quality of abounding in trees)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Made hard like wood as the result of the deposition of lignin in the cell walls

Similar:

hard (resisting weight or pressure)

 Context examples 

A non-technical term applied to all tissues outside the vascular cambium in a woody stem.

(Bark, Stem, Food and Drug Administration)

A non-technical term applied to all tissues outside the vascular cambium in a woody root.

(Bark, Root, Food and Drug Administration)

High hills rose immediately behind, and at no great distance on each side; some of which were open downs, the others cultivated and woody.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

A non-technical term applied to all tissues outside the vascular cambium in woody root, stem, or branch.

(Bark, Food and Drug Administration)

One only he saw,—a sleek gray fellow, flattened against a gray dead limb so that he seemed a part of it, a woody excrescence upon the wood itself.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

A long, hollow or pithy, jointed woody stem that usually lives only one or two years.

(Cane, Food and Drug Administration)

The plants are described as glabrous perennials, erect and usually woody at the base.

(Hypericum perforatum, NCI Thesaurus)

The sweet edible fruit of the date palm with a single long woody seed.

(Date Fruit, NCI Thesaurus)

Lacking moisture, especially having insufficient rainfall to support trees or woody plants.

(Arid, NOAA Paleoclimate Glossary)

There the basalt cliffs of the outside were reproduced upon the inside, forming an escarpment about two hundred feet high, with a woody slope beneath it.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)