wold

From Middle English wald, wold, from Old English (Anglian) wald (compare weald), from Proto-Germanic *walþuz, from Proto-Indo-European *wel(ə)-t- (compare Norwegian voll ‘field, meadow’, Welsh gwallt ‘hair’, Lithuanian váltis ‘oat awn’, Serbo-Croatian vlât ‘ear (of wheat)’, Ancient Greek λάσιος (lásios) ‘hairy’). See also the related term weald.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /wəʊld/
• (General American) enPR: wōld, IPA^(key): /woʊld/
• Rhymes: -əʊld

wold (plural wolds)

1. (archaic, regional) An unforested or deforested plain, a grassland, a moor.
   • c. 1605, William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act III, Scene 4,

     Saint Withold footed thrice the ’old;

     He met the nightmare, and her nine fold;

   • 1817, Walter Scott, Rob Roy, Volume I, Chapter 8,

     “ […] I came with my cousin, Frank Osbaldistone, there, and I must show him the way back again to the Hall, or he’ll lose himself in the wolds.”

   • 1818, Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, stanza 69,

     And therefore did he take a trusty band

     To traverse Acarnania forest wide,

     In war well-seasoned, and with labours tanned,

     Till he did greet white Achelous’ tide,

     And from his farther bank Ætolia’s wolds espied.

   • 1833, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “To J. S.” in Poems, London: Edward Moxon, p. 158,

     The wind that beats the mountain, blows

     More softly round the open wold,

   • 1847, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline, Part IV,

     Blossomed the opening spring, and the notes of the robin and bluebird

     Sounded sweet upon wold and in wood, yet Gabriel came not.

   • 1865, Christina Rossetti, “From Sunset to Star Rise” in Poems, Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1906, p. 26,

     Take counsel, sever from my lot your lot,

     Dwell in your pleasant places, hoard your gold;

     Lest you with me should shiver on the wold,

     Athirst and hungering on a barren spot.

   • 1881, Oscar Wilde, “Rome Unvisited” in Poems, London: Methuen & Co., 12th edition, 1913, p. 48,

     Before yon field of trembling gold

     Is garnered into dusty sheaves,

     Or ere the autumn’s scarlet leaves

     Flutter as birds adown the wold,

   • 1942, Neville Shute, Pied Piper, New York: William Morrow & Co., Chapter 8,

     It seemed to be a fairly large and prosperous farm, grouped round a modest country house standing among trees as shelter from the wind. About it rolled the open pasture of the wold, as far as could be seen.

2. (obsolete) A wood or forest, especially a wooded upland.

• Used in many English place-names, always hilly tracts of land.
• Wald (German) is a cognate, but a false friend because it retains the original meaning of forest.

• weald

• OED 2nd edition 1989

• (UK) IPA^(key): /wəʊld/

wold (comparative wolder, superlative woldest)

1. (archaic, dialectal, West Country, Dorset, Devon) Old.
   • 1873, Elijah Kellogg, Sowed by the Wind: Or, The Poor Boy's Fortune, Boston: Lee and Shepard, page 19:

     "[A] girt wind had a-blowed the wold tree auver, so that his head were in the water."

   • 1891, Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, volume 1, London: James R. Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., page 7:

     "I've got a wold silver spoon, and a wold graven seal at home, too; but, Lord, what's a graven seal?"

• dowl, lowd, owld

wold

1. would

• p. 1, Arthur; A Short Sketch of his Life and History in English Verse of the First Half of the Fifteenth Century, Frederick Furnivall ed. EETS. Trübner & Co.: London. 1864.

wôld

1. Alternative spelling of wôlt.