woods
woods Lexical Profile
woods Game Scores & Validity
• noun
An area of land covered with a dense growth of trees and shrubs, typically smaller than a forest.
"The children spent the afternoon hiking along a narrow trail through the woods."
A dense, complex, or perilous situation from which it is difficult to escape (chiefly used in the phrase 'out of the woods').
"Although the company's third-quarter earnings improved, analysts warned that the business is not out of the woods yet."
Word Nuance & Usage
When referring to a forested area, 'woods' is plural in form (often used with 'the', as in 'the woods') and typically takes a plural verb, though it functions as a single geographical expanse roughly smaller than a forest.
• Rhymes for woods
Word Origin & Etymology
Derived from the plural of 'wood', which comes from Old English 'wudu' (earlier 'widu'), meaning a tree, forest, or timber, tracing back to Proto-Germanic '*widuz'.