woods

• IPA^(key): /wʊdz/

• Audio (US)

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• Rhymes: -ʊdz

woods

1. plural of wood
2. (usually in the plural, sometimes singular) A dense collection of trees covering a relatively small area; smaller than a forest.

   Woods are lovely, dark places.

   These woods are near a field.

   This woods is near a field. (uncommon)

   • 1939, C. R. Tillotson, The Care and Improvement of the Farm Woods (Farmers' Bulletin No. 1177)‎, page 18:

     Where protection is not considered essential, the logical places for establishing a woods are on those portions of the farm which have steep slopes […] .

   • 2009, James Preston Hardison, Miracles on the Poke-A-No‎, page 159:

     Night after night, we both had similar dreams that our daughter was wandering around in a woods.

   • 2013, Robert McGowan, Current: Essays on the Passing of Time in the Woods‎, page 20:

     It is a crop, like a crop of corn, which differs from a natural field of grasses in the way that a crop of trees differs from a woods.

3. (military, attributive) For chemical behavior purposes, trees in full leaf (coniferous or medium-dense deciduous forests).

• Woods more often takes a plural verb (determiner, etc, as in these woods are) than a singular verb (as in this woods is).[1]
• In English, one does not say "I was lost in the wood," but rather "I was lost in the woods."

• See also Thesaurus:forest

• Lake of the Woods
• out of the woods
• woodsman

woods

1. Third-person singular simple present indicative form of wood