Etymology Dictionary

WAD,  a small bundle of stuff, a little mass of tow, &c.  (Scand.)   Nares cites 'a wadde of hay,' a bundle of hay, from the poet Taylor's Works, 1630.   'Make it [lupines] into wads or bottles;' Holland, tr. of Pliny, b. xvii. c. 9; cf. the phrase 'a bottle of hay.'—Swed. vadd, wadding; O. Swed. wad, clothing, cloth, stuff (Ihre); Icel. vaðr, stuff, only in the comp. vaðmál, a plain woollen stuff, wadmal; Dan. vat, wadding. + G. watte, wadding, wad, a large fishing-net; cf. watten, to dress cloth, to wad; also wat, cloth (Flügel).   β. The stuff called wadmal was formerly well known in England; in Arnold's Chronicle (repr. 1811), p. 236, we find, among imports, notice of 'Rollys of wadmoll' and 'curse [coarse] wadmoll.'   Halliwell gives:  'Wadmal, a very thick coarse kind of woollen cloth; coarse tow used by doctors for cattle is also so called.'   It is highly probable that our wad is nothing but a shortened form of wadmal in the sense of coarse tow, or coarse stuff, instead of being borrowed from the O. Swed. wad.   It brings us, however, ultimately, to the same result.   The Icel. vaðr properly means 'a fishing-line,' much as the G. watte means a fishing-net.   The Icel. vaðmál is certainly allied to Icel. vád, vód, vod, a piece of stuff, cloth as it leaves the loom, which is again allied to E. weed, a garment, as used in the phr. 'a widow's weeds.'   γ. Thus, whilst it is obviously impossible to derive wad from A. S. wǽd, a garment (which became E. weed), it is certain that we may refer both wad and E. weed to the same root, viz. the Teut. base WAD, to bind, wind together (Fick, iii. 284).   This base accounts for the various senses, viz. wad, stuff wound together, Icel. váð, stuff bound or woven together, G. watte, a fishing-net (because twined together), and Icel. vaðr, a fishing-line (because twisted together).   See further under Weed (2).   δ. The Russ. vata, F. ouate, wadding, Span. huata, Ital. ovata, are all of Teut. origin, the last form being due to an attempt to give it a sense from Ital. ovo, an egg.   It is quite unnecessary to suppose (as Diez, not very confidently, suggests) that the whole set of words allied to wad are derived from the Lat. ouum, an egg.   His difficulty was due to the difficulty of connecting Ital. ovata with O. H. G. wát, a weed, or garment, from which it appears (at first sight) to differ widely in sense.    But the solution is, to derive ovata from G. watte, not from wát itself.   Der. wadd-ing; wad-mal, as above.   And see wallet and wattle.