wad
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: simple
Etymology: Probably short for Middle English wadmal (“woolen cloth”), from Old Norse váðmál (“woolen stuff”), from váð (“cloth”) + mál (“measure”). See wadmal.
Cognate with Swedish vadd (“wadding, cotton wool”), German Wat, Watte (“wad, padding, cotton wool”), Dutch lijnwaad, gewaad, watten (“cotton wool”), West Frisian waad, Old English wǣd (“garment, clothing”) (English: weed). More at weed, meal.
Inflected forms:
form: wads
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: wadde
pos: noun
tags: alternative
form: wads
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: wadding
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: wadded
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: wadded
pos: verb
tags: past
form: wadde
pos: verb
tags: alternative
Senses:
gloss: An amorphous, compact mass.
pos: noun
examples: Our cat loves to play with a small wad of paper.
My first impulse was to get it[the chewing gum] into my mouth as quickly as possible, but I remembered where I was. I ran home, and on our front porch I examined my loot. The gum looked fresh. I sniffed it and it smelled all right. I licked it and waited for a while. When I did not die I crammed it into my mouth: Wrigley’s Double-Mint.
When Jem came home he asked me where I got such a wad. I told him I found it.
gloss: A substantial pile (normally of money).
pos: noun
examples: With a wad of cash like that, she should not have been walking round Manhattan.
The campfires provide enough plain old regular visible light to show this sorry affair for what it is: a bunch of demented Boy Scouts, a jamboree without merit badges or hygiene. With the IR supered on top of the visible, she can also see vague, spectral red faces out in the shadows where her unassisted eyes would only see darkness. These new Knight Visions cost her a big wad of her Mob drug-running money. Just the kind of thing Mom had in mind when she insisted Y.T. get a part-time job.
gloss: A soft plug or seal, particularly as used between the powder and pellets in a shotgun cartridge, or earlier on the charge of a muzzleloader or cannon.
pos: noun
examples: "Bulleted revolver cartridges contain no wad. You are thinking of a shot-gun, sir."
gloss: A sandwich.
pos: noun
tags: slang
examples: Once we were all sat on the ground, drinking our tea and eating a cheese wad - that was all you could get - I asked where my mate Jackson was. Nobody had any idea but as he was required in the flight office we did a search.
gloss: An ejaculation of semen.
pos: noun
tags: slang
vulgar
examples: All at once, Steven let out a loud gasp, as his cock jerked violently in his hand and sent wad after wad of hot white sperm shooting out all over his chest and stomach.
It's a strange thing this yellow liquid, the bodily fluid of a stranger. What was he thinking when he shot his wad? Is he somewhere now wondering about his sperm? Is he at this very moment wondering if a woman somewhere is inseminating with his seed? Well, we are! Here we are in Boston, and we are!
When a man "blows his wad," at least two different things could have occurred: he either spent or lost all his money in a wager (his wad), or he spent or ejaculated his sperm (his wad). Thorne goes on to suggest that since at least the 1950s "blow," in this context, is a euphemism for "ejaculate."
Grabbing hold of his throbbing organ, he started to turn away from her, had second thoughts, and proceeded to shoot his wad, ejaculate all over the sweating, sultry body that was stretched out, languishing at his feet.
gloss: To crumple or crush into a compact, amorphous shape or ball.
pos: verb
examples: She wadded up the scrap of paper and threw it in the trash.
[…] if you lay any fearnbrakes or other trash about them to entertain the moisture, and skreen it from the heat, let it not be wadded so close, or suffer’d to lie so long, as to contract any mustiness, but rather loose and easie, that the Air may have free intercourse, and to break the more intense ardours of the scorching Sun-beams.
She stood just inside the door, wadding a black-bordered hand-kerchief in her small gloved hands […]
Mitch wadded the note, and tossed it over the cliff.
She wadded Marian into her chair, which was lumpy with garments in progressive stages of dirtiness, and tucked a towel around her neck.
gloss: To wager.
pos: verb
tags: Ulster
gloss: To insert or force a wad into.
pos: verb
examples: to wad a gun
gloss: To stuff or line with some soft substance, or wadding, like cotton.
pos: verb
examples: to wad a cloak
[…] upon his Body were several Flannel Wastcoats, a Cassock of thick Cloth, with a thick wadded Gown, and about his Shoulders the Quilt which he had taken from off the Bed.
Could you believe it possible that through such a night as this they choose to sleep under those wadded cotton coverlets, and dread not instantaneous asphixiation?
If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.
Derived words: get one's panties in a wad
Joan the wad
junk wad
mobile wad
oily-wad
pop one's wad
spit wad
Translations: