woolfist, a puff-ball. Wily Beguiled, Prologue. For wolf-fist; Gk. L. lycoperdon, which has the same sense; see Weigand, Germ. Dict. (s.v. Bofist).
woolward: in phr. to go woolward, i.e. in wool only, without linen, often enjoined as a penance by the Church of Rome; ‘I have no shirt, I go woolward for penance’, L. L. L. v. 2. 717; ‘He went woolward and barefooted to many churches’, Stow’s Annals, H. 7 (Nares); ‘Wolworde, without any lynnen nexte ones body, sans chemyse’, Palsgrave. ME. wolleward (wolward), see Pricke of Conscience, 3514; P. Plowman’s Crede, 788; P. Plowman, B. xviii. 1 (see note, p. 395). [It is probable that the ME. form wolleward is due to popular etymology, and that the word properly represents an OE. *wullwered, clothed in wool, cp. swegelwered, clothed with heavenly brightness. The corruption would be natural, when the sense of wered was lost, as -ward was a common suffix. The phr. ‘to go woolward’ cannot be genuine: it could only mean ‘to go towards wool’, which is not the sense (Dr. Henry Bradley). See note on the word ‘woolward’ in Mayor and Lumby’s edition of Beda’s Eccles. Hist., p. 347.]
woose, ‘ooze’, soft mud, Phaer, Aeneid iii, 606; wose, id., ii. 135. Hence woosy, full of soft mud, Drayton, Pol. xxv. 205. ME. wose, mud (Wars Alex. 413). OE. wōs; see Napier’s Glosses, 1818.
woose, to ooze, Golding, tr. Ovid, fol. 127. See Dict.
word, a motto; ‘And round about the wreath this word was writ, Burnt I doe burne’, Spenser, F. Q. ii. 4. 38; ‘His word which on his ragged shield was writ, Salvagesse sans finesse’, id., iv. 4. 39.
world; ‘It is a world’, i.e. it’s wonderful (to see), Much Ado, iii. 5. 38; Tam. Shrew, ii. 1. 313. To go to the world, to get married, Much Ado, ii. 1. 331; a woman of the world, a married woman, As You Like It, v. 3. 5.
worm, to remove what was called the worm from under a dog’s tongue; a supposed preventive of his going mad; ‘I should have wormed you, sir, for [to prevent your] running mad’, Ford, ’Tis pity, i. 2 (Vasque).
wot, in use as the present tense of the vb. wit, to know; ‘I wot not what rule ye keep’, Latimer, Serm. (ed. Arber, 255); ‘I wote not’, Bible, Gen. xxi. 26 (in RV. ‘I know not’); ‘God wot’, Richard III, iii. 2. 89. ME. preterite-present I wot, thou wost, he wot, pl. witen (Chaucer); OE. ic wāt, þū wāst, he wāt, pl. witon. Tudor and later English have much false grammar with respect to this verb: Shaks. has wotting (for witting}, wots (for wot), wot’st (for wost); and wotteth (for wot) is found in the Bible, Gen. xxxix. 8 (in RV. ‘knoweth’).
wrabbed, perverse, hard to manage; ‘So crabbed, so wrabbed, so stiff, so untoward’, Jacob and Esau, in Hazlitt’s Dodsley, ii. 211. See Nares.
wrack, destruction, loss; ‘The wrack of maidenhood’, All’s Well, iii. 5. 24; ‘The commonwealth hath daily run to wrack’, 2 Hen. VI, i. 3. 127; destruction by sea, shipwreck, Venus and Ad. 454; to ruin, destroy, Hamlet, ii. 1. 113; wracked (wrackt), shipwrecked, Meas. for M. iii. 1. 225. See Dict. (s.v. Wreck).