From Middle English waden, from Old English wadan, from Proto-Germanic *wadaną, from Proto-Indo-European *weh₂dʰ- (“to go”). Cognates include German waten (“wade”) and Latin vādō (“go, walk; rush”) (whence English evade, invade, pervade).
- (intransitive) to walk through water or something that impedes progress.
- 1667, John Milton, “Book 2”, in Paradise Lost. A Poem Written in Ten Books, London: […] [Samuel Simmons], […], OCLC 228722708; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, OCLC 230729554:
- So eagerly the fiend […] / With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way, / And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies.
- 1918, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Land That Time Forgot Chapter VIII
- After breakfast the men set out to hunt, while the women went to a large pool of warm water covered with a green scum and filled with billions of tadpoles. They waded in to where the water was about a foot deep and lay down in the mud. They remained there from one to two hours and then returned to the cliff.
- (intransitive) to progress with difficulty
- to wade through a dull book
- 1697, “Aeneis”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], OCLC 403869432:
- And wades through fumes, and gropes his way.
- 1701, Charles Davenant, A Discourse on Grants and Resumptions and Essays on the Balance of Power:
- The king's admirable conduct has waded through all these difficulties.
- (transitive) to walk through (water or similar impediment); to pass through by wading
- wading swamps and rivers
- (intransitive) To enter recklessly.
- to wade into a fight or a debate
wade (plural wades)
- An act of wading.
- We had to be careful during our dangerous wade across the river.}}
- (colloquial) A ford; a place to cross a river.
- Obsolete form of .
- (Can we find and add a quotation of Mortimer to this entry?)
Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for wade in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.)
- Afrikaans: waai
- type of trawl
- Alternative form of