Etymology

plywood

P3L1Y4W4O1O1D2

Today it means: Construction material supplied in sheets, and made of three or more layers of wood veneer glued together, laid up with alternating layers having their grain perpendicular to each other. Full definition →

English wood ← Middle English wode ← Old English wudu
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The story

  1. Englishply
  2. Proto-Indo-European*dwóh₁
  3. Proto-Indo-European*dwi-
  4. Proto-Indo-European*dʰeh₁-
  5. Proto-Indo-European*h₁weydʰh₁-
  6. Proto-Indo-European*(h₁)wéydʰ(h₁)us
  7. Proto-Germanic*widuz
  8. Proto-West Germanic*widu
  9. Old Englishwidu
  10. Old Englishwudu
  11. Middle Englishwode
  12. Englishwood
  13. English todayplywood

From ply (“sheet”) + wood.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.