wade

/weɪd/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Scotland/wed/

wade verb: to walk through water or something that impedes progress. Also the obsolete form of woad.

Image: Rhododendrites, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Verb

wade (third-person singular simple present wades, present participle wading, simple past and past participle waded)

(intransitive) To walk through water or something that impedes progress.
- So eagerly the fiend […] / With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way, / And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies.1667, John Milton, “Book II”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished...
- 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...1918 September–November, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Land That Time Forgot”, in The Blue Book Magazine, Chicago, Ill.: Story-press Corp., →OCLC; republished as chapter VIII, in Hugo Gernsback, editor...
(intransitive) To progress with difficulty.
- to wade through a dull book
- And wades through fumes, and gropes his way.1697, Virgil, “Aeneis”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC
(transitive) To walk through (water or similar impediment); to pass through by wading.
- wading swamps and rivers
To gleam intermittently through clouds or mist.
- I saw my Meg come linking o'er the lee; I saw my Meg, but Maggy saw nae me: For yet the sun was wading through the mist, And she was close upon me ere she wist.1821, Allan Ramsay, The Gentle Shepherd, Etc, page 6
- ... the pale light of a crescent moon wading among the black and lowering clouds.1846, Anne Marsh-Caldwell, Father Darcy, page 247
(intransitive) To enter recklessly.
- to wade into a fight or a debate
- The champ [Alekhine] seems to reel and stagger helplessly. It's an old gag because a blind man can see he ain't glassy-eyed a-tall—but Rodzinsky wades in. 10.QxR1940 January, "Cauliflower-Face Flaherty" (real identity unknown), “Muscle over Mind”, in Chess Review

Noun

wade (plural wades)

An act of wading.
- We had to be careful during our dangerous wade across the river.
(colloquial) A ford; a place to cross a river.

Proper noun capitalized: Wade

Wade

A topographic surname from Old English.
A male given name transferred from the surname.
- 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.1936 June 30, Margaret Mitchell, chapter VII, in Gone with the Wind, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, →OCLC
A system of romanization for the Chinese language based on 19th-century Pekingese pronunciation, worked out by Thomas Wade.

Synonyms:

romanization system
A town in Aroostook County, Maine.
A census-designated place in Jackson County, Mississippi.
A town in Cumberland County, North Carolina.
An unincorporated community in Washington County, Ohio.
Two townships in Illinois, in Clinton County and Jasper County.

Also used as

wade is also the obsolete form of woad.

wade meaning in Vietnamese

wade in Vietnamese

to walk through water or something that impedes progress: lội

Examples of wade in a sentence

They waded in to where the water was about a foot deep and lay down in the mud.1918 September–November, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Land That Time Forgot”, in The Blue Book Magazine, Chicago, Ill.: Story-press Corp....
The king's admirable conduct has waded through all these difficulties.1701, Charles Davenant, A Discourse on Grants and Resumptions and Essays on the Balance of Power:
When the sun wades through clouds of any kind, rain may or may not follow;1851, John Marius Wilson, The rural cyclopedia, or, A general dictionary of agriculture and of the arts ... necessary to the farmer ......
It's rain afoor meeght, t'sun waded sadly ez sha peeped ower Roseberry.1911, Richard Blakeborough, Wit, Character, Folklore & Customs of the North Riding of Yorkshire, page 486:

All 40 example sentences with wade

Synonyms of wade

romanization system

Forms of wade

Verb
third-person singular present	wades
present participle	wading
past participle	waded
past	waded
Noun
plural	wades
Proper noun
alternative form	Waide

Past tense of wade: waded

Origin of wade

From Middle English waden, from Old English wadan, from Proto-West Germanic *wadan, from Proto-Germanic *wadaną (“to go, pass through”), from Proto-Indo-European *weh₂dʰ- (“to go”). Cognates include Saterland Frisian waadje (“to wade”), West Frisian wâdzje (“to wade”), Dutch waden (“to wade”), German Low German waden (“to wade”), German waten (“to wade”), Danish vade (“to wade”), Swedish vada (“to wade”), Icelandic vaða (“to wade”), and Latin vādō (“go, walk; rush”).

From Old English wæd (“a ford”).

Words formed from wade

Words that rhyme with wade

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about wade

What does wade mean?: Wade means to walk through water or something that impedes progress.
What is wade in Vietnamese?: Wade in Vietnamese is lội. See Wade meaning in Vietnamese.
How do you use wade in a sentence?: They waded in to where the water was about a foot deep and lay down in the mud.
What part of speech is wade?: Wade can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce wade?: Wade is pronounced /weɪd/.
What is the past tense of wade?: The past tense of wade is waded.

Words near wade in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: wade (page history and authors); Wade (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-wade.ogg, LL-Q1860 (eng)-I learned some phrases-weighed.wav.

Cite this entry: “wade.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wade. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.