Forms: 1 watul, pl. watla (North.), watelas; 4 wattel, 5 wattyl(le, 6 wattill, Anglo-Irish vattill (Sc. pl. vatlis), 6–7 wattell, 7 wadle, 9 dial. waddle, 6– wattle. [OE. watul (not found in other Teut. langs.) of uncertain origin, but app. cogn. w. wætla, (? wǽtla) bandage for a wound (Sax. Leechdoms, II. 208).
It may possibly represent O.Teut. *waðlo-z (with irregular treatment of the dental before liquid as in BOTTLE sb.1, BOTTOM sb.):—pre-Teut. *wodhlo-s, f. *wodh- (: *wedh-) to intertwine, plait, see weave: WEED sb. If so, it may correspond to mod.G. dial. wadel brushwood (see Grimm’s Deutsches Wb. XIII. 2821, s.v. Wedel.]
I. 1. In plural and collect. sing. Rods or stakes, interlaced with twigs or branches of trees, used to form fences and the walls and roofs of buildings. Also, rods and branches of trees collected for this purpose.
c. 900. Bæda’s Hist., III. xvi. (1890), 202. And micelne ad ʓesomnade on beamum and on raftrum and on waʓum and on watelum [mistransl. of L. parietum virgeorum] and on ðeacon.
c. 950. Lindisf. Gosp., Luke v. 19. Astiʓon … onufa hus ðerh ða watla [c. 1000 Ags. Gosp. þurh þa watelas; Vulg. per tegulas].
a. 1000. in Napier, OE. Glosses, ii. 489. Tegulis, watelum.
c. 1000. Ælfric, Gloss., IX. xxvi. (Z) 52/13. Teges, watul.
1382. Durham Halm. Rolls (Surtees), 175. Habebit meremium … et virg. et wattels, cabul., et ferramenta.
1453–4. Durham Acc. Rolls (Surtees), 150. j fothr’ de palis et virgis et j fothr’ del Wattylle.
1488–9. Finchale Priory (Surtees), p. ccclxxxii. Et in adquisitione wattyllis et cariagio straminis et wattyllis iiijs. xd.
1510. Galway Archives, in 10th Rep. Hist. MSS. Comm., App. V. 394. Anny man to bring in wode, troffe, or vattill.
1547–8. Burgh Rec. Stirling (1887), 52. And the remanent of the said tenement … standand sufficiently in gret tymmer … and in kaboris, wattillis and stray, thak and devot, sobirly apperand watir ticht.
1563. in Reg. Mag. Sig. Scot., 1567, 444/2. Colligere lie vatlis et fallyne tymmer de dicta silva pro reparatione et edificatione domorum.
1586. Hooker, Hist. Irel., in Holinshed, II. 12/1. And there they cast a trench, and builded a little castell or hold, with turffes and wattell.
1632. Lithgow, Trav. (1906), 374. These Fabrickes are advanced three or foure yardes high,… erected in a singular Frame, of smoake-torne straw … and Raine-dropping watles.
1633. Stafford, Pac. Hib., III. viii. 313. Having all the day before employed a great partie of men to the Wood … to fetch more wattle, to make Gabions.
1699. Dampier, Voy., II. I. 43. The Walls are either Mud, or Watle bedawbed over.
1834. Pringle, Afr. Sk., vi. 218. Stretching a large tree across it [sc. the path] … and fastening it with thongs and wattles at either end.
1836. Thirlwall, Greece, III. xx. 146. Layers of stiff clay, pressed down close on wattles of reed.
1851–62. D. Wilson, Preh. Ann., II. IV. i. 189. The earliest British churches were built of wattles.
1867. Tennyson, Holy Grail, 63. And there he built with wattles from the marsh A little lonely church in days of yore.
1868. Milman, St. Paul’s, ii. 21. Its growth … from enclosures of wattel and timber to stately buildings of stone.
1886. Stevenson, Kidnapped, xxiii. The walls were of wattle and covered with moss.
b. Wattle and daub (dab): interwoven twigs plastered with clay or mud, as a building material for huts, cottages, etc.; chiefly attrib. Also (rarely) daub and wattle, mud and wattle.
1808. T. Batchelor, Agric. Bedford, 21. The cottages and barns … are built with wood frame work, and clay plaster upon a kind of hedge work of splints, which is called wattle and dab.
1836. Ross, Hobart Town Almanack, 66. Wattle and daub. [Instructions for using the branches of the black or the green wattle (see sense 4 below) for this kind of construction.]
1852. W. Wickenden, Hunchback’s Chest, 311. It [a cattle-shed] was open on one side, but secured on the other three by strong wattle and daub walls.
1855. Dickens, etc., Holly-tree Inn, iv. 26/1. Robinson … stood at the door of a considerable erection of wattle-and-dab.
1872–4. Jefferies, Toilers of Field (1892), 183. One wall of the house … was only ‘wattle and daub’ (i. e., lath and plaster).
1883. Olive Schreiner, Afr. Farm, II. iii. His house was a little square daub-and-wattle building.
1891. Kipling, City Dreadf. Nt., 36. There are no houses here—nothing but acres and acres, it seems, of foul wattle-and-dab huts, any one of which would be a disgrace to a frontier village.
1901. Archæol. Jrnl. (Instit.), March, 68. A light and simple erection of wattle-and-daub.
1913. Engl. Rev., Aug., 59. I saw the house, a mud and wattle rancho.
c. attrib. and Comb., as wattle-canoe, -gate, -wall, -work; † wattle-silver, some kind of feudal impost; wattle-wood W. Indian (see quot.).
1893. Sir W. W. Hunter, in Skrine, Life (1901), 424. In the bay, the fishermen use the *wattle-canoes, or curraghs, which their ancestors used at the time of the Roman invasion.
1759. Universal Chron., 3–10 Feb., 45/3. The person who committed the robbery, by the help of a short ladder artfully spliced to a *Wattle-gate, set against a closet window, took out a pane of glass, [etc.].
1263. in Cal. Inquis. Post Mortem (1904), I. 173. *Watelselver. Ibid. (1271), 253. [Customs called] Mortonefar’, Watelselver, Wodelode, [etc.].
1484. Anc. Deed, 24 Dec. (P.R.O.), D. 1102. Withe certene Custume siluer to the foresaide Maner perteynyng callid Revesiluer Watelsiluer and Werkesiluer of the Tenauntez of Charletone [near Steyning, Sussex].
1886. Athenæum, 24 April, 556/3. These were generally huts built of logs or with *wattle walls.
1864. Grisebach, Flora W. Ind. Isl., 788. *Wattle-wood, Lætia Thamnia.
1860. H. Mayhew, Upper Rhine, vi. 427. Lindau is a kind of Upper-Rhenish Holland, being a city built out in the water, and surrounded with a thick *wattle-work of piles.
1878. Keary, Dawn Hist., ii. 30. The huts were made of wattle-work, coated on both sides with clay.
1900. Baring-Gould, Bk. Dartmoor, 42. The Britons had brought with them their great aptitude for wattle-work.
2. A hurdle. dial.
1640. Somner, Antiq. Canterb., 10. The Citizens after much suit to the Monks, prevailed with them … to sell them of their wood to make hurdles or wattles withall, for the defence of their City.
1681. Worlidge, Syst. Agric., Dict. Rust., 334. Wattels also signify spleeted Gates or Hurdles.
1697. in Sussex Archæol. Collect., VI. 195. Two wagon Ropes three Rakes 00 04 00 Thirty wattelles 01 10 00.
1805. R. W. Dickson, Pract. Agric., II. 674. The flatted hurdle, or what in some districts is termed waddle, is much preferable to the close-rodded or wattled kind.
1822. Cobbett, Rur. Rides (1885), I. 129. This hazle … furnishes rods wherewith to make fences; but its principal use is, to make wattles for the folding of sheep in the fields.
1857. Hughes, Tom Brown, I. vii. The scent [in Hares-and-hounds] lies thick right across another meadow and into a ploughed field, where the pace begins to tell; then over a good wattle with a ditch on the other side.
1889. Dor. E. Hurst, Horsham (ed. 2), Gloss. 270. Wattle, a hurdle of a particular kind, made by weaving in long thin stems of underwood.
3. A wand, rod, stick. dial.
1570. Levins, Manip., 38/26. A wattle, rod, vibex.
1726. Swift, Gulliver, IV. x. I … cut down several oak wattles, about the thickness of a walking-staff, and some larger pieces. [To build a canoe.]
1786. Burns, Auld Farmer’s Salut., x. Nae whip nor spur, but just a wattle O’ saugh or hazle.
1831. Lover, Leg. & Stor. Irel., Paddy the Piper, 156. I cut a brave long wattle, that I might dhrive the man-ather iv a thief, as she was, without bein’ near her at all at all.
1843. J. Ballantine, Wee Raggit Laddie, vi. Nae jockey’s whup, nor drover’s wattle Can frighten thee.
1846. J. Keegan, Leg. & Poems (1907), 395. An old man … tottered with the aid of a long iron-shod wattle which he carried in his withered hand, to the door of a snug-looking public house.
1856. P. Kennedy, Banks of Boro, xli. (1867), 337. Pat’s wattle descended on the upper horizontal line of Charley’s thigh.
b. Comb.: wattle-boy Anglo-Irish (see quot.); wattle-race U.S., a Western form of ‘running the gauntlet’ (cf. GANTLOPE).
1832. Barrington, Personal Sk., III. xx. 280. His reverence … was instantly recognised by one of the wattle-boys, as the pikemen were then called.
1839. Duncan, in Congr. Globe, Jan., App. 104/2. It would have been like the wattle races I have seen run in the West; he that ran the fastest received the fewest stripes.
II. 4. Australian. [Originally wattle-tree, from the use of the long pliant branches for making wattled fences or wattle-and-daub buildings.] The common name in Australia for indigenous trees of the genus Acacia. Also with defining word indicating the particular species, as Black Wattle, Acacia binervata and A. decurrens; Broad-leaved, Golden, Green Wattle, A. pycnantha; Silver Wattle, A. dealbata; but the application of these (and other similar terms) varies according to locality.
The bark of most of these trees is valuable for use in tanning, and they exude a gum resembling gum arabic. The golden yellow flowers are celebrated for their beauty and fragrance.
The acacias were included in the Linnæan genus Mimosa. Hence in popular use mimosa was long current as a synonym of wattle, and is still sometimes so used, at least in England. See MIMOSA 1 b.
[c. 1810: see Wattle-tree in d.]
1828. P. Cunningham, N. S. Wales, I. 201. The acacias are the common wattles of this colony, their bark affording excellent tan.
1832. Bischoff, Van Diemen’s Land, II. 23. The black and silver wattle … are trees used in housework and furniture.
1859. H. Kingsley, G. Hamlyn, xxiii. Fringed with black wattle and light-wood. Ibid., xliii. The sarsaparilla still hung in scant purple tufts on the golden wattle.
1863. Technologist, III. 5. The gum of the black wattle (Acacia mollissima, Willd.) … is very inferior to it [sc. that of the silver wattle].
1888. Candish, Whispering Voices, 45. And the wattle’s yellow bloom Fills pure gales with rich perfume.
b. The flower of the wattle.
1867. A. G. Middleton, Earnest, 132. The maidens were with golden wattles crowned.
c. = wattle-bark.
1893. Advt., in Morris, Austral Engl., s.v. Wattle-bark, Bark…. Bundled Black Wattle, superior, £5 to £6 per ton;… chopped Black Wattle, £5 to £6. 5s. per ton.
1911. Webster.
d. attrib. and Comb., as wattle-bark, -bloom, -blossom, -bough, -cluster, -flower, -gloom, -gum, -scrub, -tree; wattle-gold poet., the golden-colored flowers of the wattle.
1828. P. Cunningham, N. S. Wales, II. 106. The various *wattle-barks are used for tan.
1852. Morfit, Tanning & Currying, 94. The leather tanned with wattle bark is of excellent quality, but highly coloured.
1890. A. Sutherland, Short Poems, 84. Here, by the *wattle bloom silently laid, Life seems like a rapturous dream.
1896. Kipling, Seven Seas, Song Engl., England’s Answ., 21. This for the waxen Heath, and that for the Wattle-bloom.
1894. A. Robertson, Nuggets, 62. The honey was coming from the sack as clear as amber and smelling of *wattle-blossom.
1855. Dickens, etc., Holly-tree Inn, iv. 29/2. Breaking off a small *wattle-bough to whisk the flies from his face.
1852. Mundy, Antipodes (1857), 87. A dense scrub of burnt *wattle-bushes about the height of hop-poles.
1889. Sherard, Daughter of South, 23. Past the plundered *wattle-cluster, Bathed no longer in the lustre, Of its golden rain.
1900. Daily News, 9 Oct., 3/1. Something dainty, like the scent of the *wattle flower.
1867. Goodrich, Angel-Beckoned, 9. Where the *wattle-glooms abound A little way below.
1870. A. L. Gordon, Bush Ballads, Ded. 41. In the Spring, when the *wattle gold trembles, ’Twixt shadow and shine.
1883. Keighley, Who are You, 54. My wealth has gone like the wattle gold You bound one day on my childish brow.
1863. Technologist, III. 4. *Wattle Gum, the gum of the Silver Wattle (Acacia dealbata, Lindl.).
1865. H. Kingsley, Hillyars & Burtons, lii. ‘Well! if this don’t bang wattle gum,’ began Gerty. Ibid. (1859), G. Hamlyn, xxviii. They were passing through a narrow way in a *wattle scrub.
c. 1810. in Trans. Linnean Soc. (1827), XV. 328. One of my specimens … I shot in a green *wattle-tree close to Government House.
1835. in K. Cornwallis, Panorama New World (1859), I. 402. We observed on a wattle tree … scratches or marks of figures, representing blacks in the act of fighting.
1890. Melbourne Argus, 10 June, 5/2. The tender … for the right to strip the wattle trees growing on the upper portion of the You Yangs.
