Also 7 wad, oad; 5 pa. pple. y-wooded. [f. WOAD sb.1]
1. trans. To dye, color or stain with woad, sometimes (in dyeing) as a ground for another color. Often fig. or in fig. context (cf. double-dyed).
1464. Rolls of Parlt., V. 562/1. Cork may be used in dying uppon Wolle y wooded.
1549–50. Act 3 & 4 Edw. VI., c. 2 § 1. Nor that any person shall … dye any Wooll to be converted into Cloth called Russettes [etc.], unlesse the same Wooll be perfectlie woaded boyled and maddered.
1603. Harsnet, Pop. Impost., 132. His wit beeing deepe woaded with that melancholick blacke dye.
1613. [see woad-mark, WOAD sb.1 3].
c. 1613. Overbury’s Wife, etc. Elegies, Wks. (1856), 6. Some murdering hand, oaded in guiltlesse blood.
1651. Cleveland, Poems, Upon Sir T. Martin, 31. Tom never oaded Squire, scarce Yeoman high, Is Tom twice dipt Knight of a double dy?
1655. Gurnall, Chr. in Arm., II. 99. The hypocrite is not thus woaded with impudency, to sinne at noonday.
1660. Fuller, Mixt Contempl., I. xlix. 76. It was never wet wadded, which giveth the fixation to a colour, and setteth it in the cloth.
1678. Pol. Ballads (1860), I. 206. Foul Error’s motly vesture first Was oaded in a Northern blue.
1820. Southey, Wesley, I. ix. 306. The Picts were apparently an unconverted tribe of indigenous savages, still tattooed and woaded.
1847. Tennyson, Princess, II. 105. Tattoo’d or woaded, winter-clad in skins.
1894. C. Vickerman, Woollen Spinning, 98. A piece is sent to the dyer with strict injunctions that it must be ‘woaded,’ that it must have a ground of indigo put upon it for making the colour of the cloth or wool more durable and lasting in the wear.
b. To treat with woad, in dyeing.
[1579–1862: see WOADED.]
1705. Whole Art of Dying (1913), 244. ’Tis above all of great importance to take care to have a perfect Black, whether it be Madder’d or Woaded only.
1727–38. Chambers, Cycl., s.v. Dyeing, Bright green is first dyed blue,… and lastly woaded.
† c. transf. (fig.) To ingrain like a dye or stain.
1647. Trapp, Comm. Matt. xxi. 37. 511. Sin had woaded shamelesnes in their fore-heads. Ibid., Jude i. 2. Sin having oaded an impudency in their faces.
1647. C. Harvey, Schola Cordis, Ode xvii. (1674), 67. The stains of sin I see Are oaded all, or did in grain.
2. To plant (land) with woad. rare.
1799. A. Young, Agric. Lincoln, 154. He has now between two and three hundred acres of arable, on land he does not woad, in a course of crops.
