Definition of wooden
1 : made or consisting of wood
2 : lacking ease or flexibility : awkwardly stiff a wooden speech a wooden performer
woodenly
adverbPeople Are Reading
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Examples of wooden in a Sentence
The guest speaker was wooden and uninspiring.
a movie with wooden dialogue
Recent Examples of wooden from the Web
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Next to the white wooden gazebo at the center of the village, a young man with dark skin, a dark beard and a bright smile played Spanish tunes on his guitar while a guest sang along with croissant in hand.
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The intense beam bored into the wooden deck and started a fire that spread to the kitchen.
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The wooden foundation piers have begun to rot and fail.
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Green stood over the wooden cross, reminiscing about some of the victims commemorated there.
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The opening moments of the production, at the Bushwick Starr, resemble an overcrowded dorm party: red lights, musky incense, heaps of audience bodies squashed together on floor cushions or sitting cheek-to-cheek on wooden benches.
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The family was gathering in our house, a two-story, box-like wooden affair.
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The site also features the Ginchy Cross, a wooden monument built by soldiers of the Irish 16th Division and originally erected on the Somme battlefield.
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This can be heard many times as folks greet their friends entering through the heavy wooden door and thick drapes that block out the outside world.
These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'wooden'. Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Did You Know?
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.
1538
First Known Use of wooden
1538
WOODEN Defined for English Language Learners
wooden
playDefinition of wooden for English Language Learners
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: made of wood
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: awkward or stiff : not having or showing any emotion, energy, etc.
WOODEN Defined for Kids
wooden
playDefinition of wooden for Students
1 : made of wood
2 : lacking spirit, ease, or charm a wooden manner
Learn More about wooden
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Thesaurus: All synonyms and antonyms for wooden Spanish Central: Translation of wooden Nglish: Translation of wooden for Spanish speakers Britannica English: Translation of wooden for Arabic speakers
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