wooden

• wodden (obsolete)

From wood +‎ -en. Dates from 1530s, gradually replaced treen (“made from a tree”), from Middle English treen, from Old English triewen.

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA^(key): /ˈwʊdn̩/

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• (Standard Southern British) IPA^(key): /ˈwɵdn̩/
• (Scotland, Northern Ireland) IPA^(key): /ˈwʉdn̩/
• Rhymes: -ʊdən

wooden (comparative more wooden, superlative most wooden)

1. Made of wood.

   a wooden boat

   On a recent windy day, hundreds of visitors climbed wooden stairs to take pictures in front of the glacier.

   • 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:

     There were many wooden chairs for the bulk of his visitors, and two wicker armchairs with red cloth cushions for superior people. From the packing-cases had emerged some Indian clubs, […], and all these articles […] made a scattered and untidy decoration that Mrs. Clough assiduously dusted and greatly cherished.

   • 2009 October 2, John Vidal, “'Tilting at windmills: the boy who harnessed the wind'”, in The Guardian‎^[1], →ISSN:

     Using a tractor fan, shock absorbers, PVC pipes, a bicycle frame and anything else he could lay his hands on, he then built a rudimentary wooden tower, plonked his home-made generator on the top, and eventually got one, and then four bulbs to light up.

   • 2012 October 8, Daniel W. Patterson, The True Image: Gravestone Art and the Culture of Scotch Irish Settlers in the Pennsylvania and Carolina Backcountry‎^[2], UNC Press Books, →ISBN, page 141:

     The second and third quarters of the shield are indecipherable on the stone but clearer in two other representations of the arms, a painted wooden funeral hatchment for Mary Davie […]

2. (figuratively) As if made of wood; moving awkwardly, or speaking with dull lack of emotion.

   wooden acting

• Ewondo

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

• IPA^(key): /ˈwuːdən/

wooden

1. wooden
   • 1867, “THE WEDDEEN O BALLYMORE”, in SONGS, ETC. IN THE DIALECT OF FORTH AND BARGY, number 4, page 96:

     An neeat wooden trenshoorès var whiter than snow.

     And neat wooden trenchers far whiter than snow.

• Jacob Poole (d. 1827) (before 1828), William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, published 1867, page 96