Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A small mass of soft material, often folded or rolled, used for padding, stuffing, or packing.
  • noun A compressed ball, roll, or lump, as of tobacco or chewing gum.
  • noun A plug, as of cloth or paper, used to retain a powder charge in a muzzleloading gun or cannon.
  • noun A disk, as of felt or paper, used to keep the powder and shot in place in a shotgun cartridge.
  • noun Informal A large amount.
  • noun A sizable roll of paper money.
  • noun A considerable amount of money.
  • noun Vulgar Slang An ejaculation of semen.
  • transitive verb To compress into a wad.
  • transitive verb To pad, pack, line, or plug with wadding.
  • transitive verb To hold (shot or powder) in place with a wad.
  • transitive verb To insert a wad into (a firearm).

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To form into a wad or into wadding; press together into a mass, as fibrous material.
  • To line with wadding, as a garment, to give more roundness or fullness to the figure, keep out the cold, render soft, or protect in any way.
  • To pad; stuff; fill out with or as with wadding.
  • To put a wad into, as the barrel of a gun; also, to hold in place by a wad, as a bullet.
  • A Scotch form of would.
  • noun An impure earthy ore of manganese, which consists of manganese dioxid associated with the oxid of iron, cobalt, or copper. When mixed with linseed-oil for a paint it is apt to take fire. Also called bog-manganese, earthy manganese.
  • noun Same as plumbago.
  • noun A small bunch or wisp of rags, hay, hair, wool, or other fibrous material, used for stuffing, for lessening the shock of hard bodies against each other, or for packing.
  • noun Specifically, something, as a piece of cloth, paper, or leather, used to hold the powder or bullet, or both, in place in a gun or cartridge.
  • noun In ceramics, a small piece of finer clay used to cover the body of an inferior material in some varieties of earthenware; especially, the piece doubled over the edge of a vessel.
  • noun An obsolete or dialectal form of woad.
  • A Scotch form of wed.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To form into a mass, or wad, or into wadding.
  • transitive verb To insert or crowd a wad into; ; also, to stuff or line with some soft substance, or wadding, like cotton.
  • noun An earthy oxide of manganese, or mixture of different oxides and water, with some oxide of iron, and often silica, alumina, lime, or baryta; black ocher. There are several varieties.
  • noun Plumbago, or black lead.
  • noun obsolete Woad.
  • noun A little mass, tuft, or bundle, as of hay or tow.
  • noun Specifically: A little mass of some soft or flexible material, such as hay, straw, tow, paper, or old rope yarn, used for retaining a charge of powder in a gun, or for keeping the powder and shot close; also, to diminish or avoid the effects of windage. Also, by extension, a dusk of felt, pasteboard, etc., serving a similar purpose.
  • noun A soft mass, especially of some loose, fibrous substance, used for various purposes, as for stopping an aperture, padding a garment, etc.
  • noun a rod with a screw or hook at the end, used for removing the wad from a gun.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun An amorphous, compact mass.
  • noun A substantial pile (normally of money).
  • noun A soft plug or seal, particularly as used between the powder and pellets in a shotgun cartridge.
  • noun vulgar, slang an ejaculate of semen.
  • noun mineralogy Any black manganese oxide or hydroxide mineral rich rock in the oxidized zone of various ore deposits
  • verb To crumple or crush into a compact, amorphous shape or ball.
  • verb Ulster to wager

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a small mass of soft material
  • noun (often followed by `of') a large number or amount or extent
  • noun a wad of something chewable as tobacco
  • verb compress into a wad
  • verb crowd or pack to capacity

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Origin unknown.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Probably short for Middle English wadmal ("woolen cloth"), from Old Norse váðmál ("woolen stuff"), from váð (“cloth”) +‎ mál (“measure”). See wadmal. Cognate with Swedish vadd ("wadding, cotton wool"), German Watte ("wad, padding, cotton wool"), Dutch watten ("cotton wool"), Old English wǣd ("garment, clothing"). More at weed, meal.

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Examples

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  • "2. Specifically, something, as a piece of cloth, paper, or leather, used to hold the powder or bullet, or both, in place in a gun or cartridge. For ordinary double- or single-barreled shot-guns, wads are disks of felt, leather, or pasteboard cut by machinery or by a hand-tool, often indented to allow passage of air in ramming home, and sometimes specially treated with a composition which helps to keep the barrels from fouling." --Cent. Dict.

    May 5, 2011