• IPA: /we͡ɪd/

wade (wades, present participle wading; past and past participle waded)

1. (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: Printed [by Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […] [a]nd by Robert Boulter […] [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], OCLC 228722708 ↗; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: The Text Exactly Reproduced from the First Edition of 1667: […], 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.

2. (intransitive) to progress with difficulty

   to wade through a dull book

   • And wades through fumes, and gropes his way.

   • The king's admirable conduct has waded through all these difficulties.

3. (transitive) to walk through (water or similar impediment); to pass through by wading

   wading swamps and rivers

4. (intransitive) To enter recklessly.

   to wade into a fight or a debate

• French: patauger
• German: waten
• Italian: guadare, procedere a stento, avanzare lentamente
• Portuguese: vadear
• Russian: брести
• Spanish: vadear

• Russian: пробираться

wade (plural wades)

1. An act of wading.
2. (colloquial) A ford; a place to cross a river.

• Italian: guado
• Portuguese: vadeação, vadeamento
• Spanish: vadeo

• wade in
• wade into
• wade through

wade (uncountable)

1. Obsolete form of woad#English|woad.

• IPA: /weɪd/

1. Surname
2. A male given name.
   • 1936, Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter VII:

     In due time, Charles' son was born and, because it was fashionable to name boys after their fathers' commanding officers, he was called Wade Hampton Hamilton.

3. A system of romanization for the Chinese language based on 19th-century Pekingese pronunciation, worked out by Thomas Wade.

• (romanization) Wade-Giles