From Middle English weeld, wæld, (also wold, wald > English wold), from (West Saxon dialect) Old English weald, from Proto-West Germanic *walþu, from Proto-Germanic *walþuz.

Compare German Wald, Dutch woud. See also wold, ultimately of the same origin. Largely displaced by forest.

• (RP) IPA: /wiːld/
• (America) IPA: /wild/

weald (plural wealds)

1. (archaic) A forest or wood.
2. (archaic) An open country.
   • 1859, Alfred Tennyson, “Guinevere”, in Idylls of the King, London: Edward Moxon & Co., […], →OCLC ↗, page 231 ↗:

     [S]he to Almesbury / Fled all night long by glimmering waste and weald, / And heard the Spirits of the waste and weald / Moan as she fled, or thought she heard them moan: […]

• wold
• wald

From weald.

• (British) IPA: /wiːld/

1. (British) The physiographic area in south-east England situated between the parallel chalk escarpments of the North and the South Downs.