MEANING
1. A framework of upright stakes interwoven with branches, used for fences or walls, or the act of making it.
2. A loose, fleshy fold hanging from the neck or head of certain animals, or a similar human fold.
3. An Australasian tree or shrub of the acacia group, often bearing small yellow flowers.
Use it for
describing a wall built from woven branches; distinguishing a framework from the mud covering it; giving a historical dwelling a precise material structureAdds woven-wall texture and a precise organic fold, with the Australian tree sense kept separate. Writing functions: Texture / Setting / Organic Form.
Words that belong together
- a wattle fence
- wattle and daub
- a woven wattle panel
On the page
The broken plaster revealed the wattle beneath it.
The enclosure was wattled with slender branches that still held a few leaves.
The turkey’s red wattle trembled with each abrupt turn of its head.
The imagined creature had a pale wattle beneath its otherwise rigid jaw.
The wattle beyond the fence had begun to flower.
Word forms
- Base
- wattle
- Past tense
- wattled
- Past participle
- wattled
- Present participle
- wattling
Usage notes
Noun and verb. Countable folds or trees: wattles; building framework often uncountable. Verb wattles, wattled, wattled, wattling; future will wattle. Register: neutral. Commonness: uncommon outside relevant settings (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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