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Origin and history of woody

woody(adj.)

late 14c., wodi, of places, "abounding in wood, overgrown with trees and shrubs," from wood (n.) + -y (2). Of plants, "having a stem of wood," from 1570s. Related: Woodiness. Old English had wudulic.

As a name for a kind of station wagon with wood panels, by 1961, U.S. surfer slang (real wood exterior panels were rare after 1951 and the last use of real wood was in the 1953 Buick Roadmaster Estate Wagon). Earlier it was "a wood-pigeon" (by 1947).

The slang meaning "erection" is attested by 1990 (for hardness).

also from late 14c.

Entries linking to woody

wood(n.)

Old English wudu, earlier widu "tree, trees collectively, forest, grove; the substance of which trees are made," from Proto-Germanic *widu-, from PIE *widhu- "tree, wood" (source also of Welsh gwydd "trees," Gaelic fiodh- "wood, timber," Old Irish fid "tree, wood"). Germanic cognates include Old Norse viðr, Danish and Swedish ved "tree, wood," Old High German witu "wood."

Sometimes in Old English it was used generically for "wild" as opposed to "domesticated" (wudubucca "wild goat," wudufugol "wild bird," wudurose "wild rose;" wudu-honig "wild honey;" wudu-æppel "crab-apple"), perhaps reflecting the dense forests that carpeted much of old England just beyond the cultivated areas.

As "printing wood-blocks," as distinguished from metallic types, by 1839. Used for the largest-size characters ("Japan Surrenders"), in tabloid newspapers it came to be shorthand for "lead headline."

As an adjective, "made of wood, wooden," by 1530s.

Out of the woods, figuratively "safe," is by 1792.

-y(2)

very common adjective suffix, "full of, covered with, or characterized by" the thing expressed by the noun, Middle English -i, from Old English -ig, from Proto-Germanic *-iga-, from PIE -(i)ko-, adjectival suffix, cognate with elements in Greek -ikos, Latin -icus (see -ic). Germanic cognates include Dutch, Danish, German -ig, Gothic -egs.

It was used from 13c. with verbs (drowsy, clingy), and by 15c. with other adjectives (crispy). Chiefly with monosyllables; with more than two the effect tends to become comedic.

Variant forms in -y for short, common adjectives (vasty, hugy) helped poets after the loss of grammatically empty but metrically useful -e in late Middle English. Verse-writers adapted to -y forms, often artfully, as in Sackville's "The wide waste places, and the hugy plain." (and the huge plain would have been a metrical balk).

After Coleridge's criticism of it as archaic artifice, poets gave up stilly (Moore probably was last to make it work, with "Oft in the Stilly Night"), paly (which Keats and Coleridge himself had used) and the rest.

Jespersen ("Modern English Grammar," 1954) also lists bleaky (Dryden), bluey, greeny, and other color words, lanky, plumpy, stouty, and the slang rummy. Vasty survives, he writes, only in imitation of Shakespeare; cooly and moisty (Chaucer, hence Spenser) he regards as fully obsolete. But in a few cases he notes (haughty, dusky) they seem to have supplanted shorter forms.