woodly

From wood +‎ -ly (adjectival suffix)

woodly (comparative more woodly, superlative most woodly)

1. (dated) Covered in trees; Wooded; woodsy.
   • 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost:

     So saying, by the hand he took me raised, And over fields and waters, as in air, Smooth sliding without step, last led me up A woodly mountain; whose high top was plain, A circuit wide enclosed, with goodliest trees Planted, with walks and bowers;

   • 1827, The Edinburgh Gazetteer, page 243:

     Argonne, a woodly tract in France, partly in Upper Champagne, and partly in the Lower Barrois.

   • 1945, Margaret Birney Pittis, Pittis Genealogy, page 25:

     SHALEFLEET. The name was probably derived from shaw, a woodly glen, and fleet, a running stream .

   • 2020, United States Work Projects Administration, Slave Narratives:

     It were a woodly country and de boy outrun he chasers.

2. Having tough, woody stems; woody.
   • 1910, The Encyclopedia Britannica, page 781:

     Cuttings of bedding plants may nnow be made freely if wanted for next season, as young cuttings rooted in the fall make soft-wooded plants as pelargoniums, fuchsias, verbenas, heliotropes, &c.' with roses and plants of a woodly nature, however , the old plants usually do best.

   • 1976, Port Royal Harbor Maintenance Dredging, page 13:

     These are Sarracenia rubra which occurs in bogs and savannahs and Schisandra glabra a woodly vine found in rich woods .

   • 2021, Mohammed Kuddus, Microbial Extremozymes, page 156:

     In some regions of the African continent and South America, cassava (Manihot esculenta), which is a woodly shrub, is consumed boiled or fermented (Fossi and Ndjouenkeu, 2017).

From Middle English wodly, wodliche (“furiously, wildly”), equivalent to wood (“mad, furious, wild, insane”) +‎ -ly (adverbial suffix).

woodly (comparative more woodly, superlative most woodly)

1. (obsolete) Madly; furiously.

• Lywood

woodly

1. madly
   • late 14th century, Geoffrey Chaucer, The Knight's Tale, The Canterbury Tales, line 1299-1302:

     Ther-with the fyr of Ielousye up-sterte
     With-inne his brest, and hente him by the herte
     So woodly, that he lyk was to biholde
     The box-tree, or the asshen dede and colde.

     With that the fire of jealousy started up
     Within his breast, and seized him by the heart
     So madly that he was to look upon like
     The box tree or the ash dead and cold.