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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.
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Examples of wooden in a Sentence
Jenny Jarvie, Los Angeles Times, 9 May 2024
The Soy Sauce Brewer: Osamu Yoshikawa Balancing on a plank atop a six-foot-tall wooden barrel, sixth-generation soy sauce producer Osamu Yoshikawa churns a thick mixture of soybeans, wheat, koji mold, and saltwater.
—Megan Zhang, Saveur, 9 May 2024
See all Example Sentences for wooden 
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'wooden.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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“Wooden.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wooden. Accessed 14 May. 2024.
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