Pronounced: thee (definite article), yee (pronoun)
Notes: I didn’t know about the different pronunciations; should be a good discussion tomorrow
Yesterday’s word
The word weald is
- a heavily wooded area; forest
- a wild or uncultivated (usually upland) region
First usage
Our word came into English before the mid-1100s
Background / Comments
When I first saw our word, I saw “weal”, which I knew from the expression “for weal or woe” (through good times and bad times) that “weal” meant “good times” — and I thought our word might be related. But then, after seeing the definition, it sounded vaguely familiar to me. Our word comes from the Middle English word weeld, which came from the Old English word weald (forest). The equivalent German word is “Wald” – thus, “Schwarzwald” is the German name for the Black Forest (“Schwarz” [black] plus “Wald” [forest]). Back to English, a related word to weald is wold, which is an upland area that has no trees; that is, it is a plan or a stretch of rolling land.
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 