wad

Etymology 1

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 Wat, Watte (“wad, padding, cotton wool”), Dutch lijnwaad, gewaad, watten (“cotton wool”), West Frisian waad, Old English wǣd (“garment, clothing”) (English: weed). More at weed, meal.

noun

1. An amorphous, compact mass.
   Our cat loves to play with a small wad of paper.
2. A substantial pile (normally of money).
   With a wad of cash like that, she should not have been walking round Manhattan.
3. A soft plug or seal, particularly as used between the powder and pellets in a shotgun cartridge, or earlier on the charge of a muzzleloader or cannon.
4. (slang) A sandwich.
   Once we were all sat on the ground, drinking our tea and eating a cheese wad - that was all you could get - I asked where my mate Jackson was. Nobody had any idea but as he was required in the flight office we did a search. 2012-01-17, Deborah Lake, Growling Over The Oceans: Avro Shackleton: The Men and the Missions
5. (slang, vulgar) An ejaculation of semen.
   All at once, Steven let out a loud gasp, as his cock jerked violently in his hand and sent wad after wad of hot white sperm shooting out all over his chest and stomach. 2000, Ian Cappell, The Awakening, London: Prowler Books
   It's a strange thing this yellow liquid, the bodily fluid of a stranger. What was he thinking when he shot his wad? Is he somewhere now wondering about his sperm? Is he at this very moment wondering if a woman somewhere is inseminating with his seed? Well, we are! Here we are in Boston, and we are! 2003, Harlyn Aizley, Buying Dad: One Woman's Search for the Perfect Sperm Donor, Los Angeles, Calif.: Alyson Books, page 70
   When a man "blows his wad," at least two different things could have occurred: he either spent or lost all his money in a wager (his wad), or he spent or ejaculated his sperm (his wad). Thorne goes on to suggest that since at least the 1950s "blow," in this context, is a euphemism for "ejaculate." 2001, Peter F. Murphy, Studs, Tools, and the Family Jewels: Metaphors Men Live By, Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, page 44
   Grabbing hold of his throbbing organ, he started to turn away from her, had second thoughts, and proceeded to shoot his wad, ejaculate all over the sweating, sultry body that was stretched out, languishing at his feet. 2008, Chaucer Malone, Miguk, the Holy Man, Bloomington, Ind.: AuthorHouse, page 490

verb

1. To crumple or crush into a compact, amorphous shape or ball.
   She wadded up the scrap of paper and threw it in the trash.
   […] if you lay any fearnbrakes or other trash about them to entertain the moisture, and skreen it from the heat, let it not be wadded so close, or suffer’d to lie so long, as to contract any mustiness, but rather loose and easie, that the Air may have free intercourse, and to break the more intense ardours of the scorching Sun-beams. 1676, John Evelyn, A Philosophical Discourse of Earth, London: John Martyn, page 181
   She stood just inside the door, wadding a black-bordered hand-kerchief in her small gloved hands […] 1930, Dashiell Hammett, chapter 11, in The Maltese Falcon, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, page 122
   Mitch wadded the note, and tossed it over the cliff. 1957 May, Jim Thompson, Alfred Hitchcock's Suspense Magazine, page 10, column 1
   She wadded Marian into her chair, which was lumpy with garments in progressive stages of dirtiness, and tucked a towel around her neck. 1969, Margaret Atwood, chapter 25, in The Edible Woman, New York: Popular Library, published 1976, page 228
2. (Ulster) To wager.
3. To insert or force a wad into.
   to wad a gun
4. To stuff or line with some soft substance, or wadding, like cotton.
   to wad a cloak
   […] upon his Body were several Flannel Wastcoats, a Cassock of thick Cloth, with a thick wadded Gown, and about his Shoulders the Quilt which he had taken from off the Bed. 1721, John Midriff, Observations on the Spleen and Vapours, London: J. Roberts, pages 7–8
   Could you believe it possible that through such a night as this they choose to sleep under those wadded cotton coverlets, and dread not instantaneous asphixiation? 1851, Richard Francis Burton, chapter 1, in Goa, and the Blue Mountains, London: Richard Bentley, page 11
   If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity. 1871, George Eliot, Middlemarch, Book 2, Chapter 20

Etymology 2

noun

1. (dialect) Plumbago, graphite.
   Wad was worth the equivalent of £1,300 a tonne, and some people felt it was worth risking a whipping to smuggle it out. 2002, Victoria Finlay, Colour: Travels Through the Paintbox, Sceptre, published 2003, page 96
2. (mineralogy) Any black manganese oxide or hydroxide mineral rich rock in the oxidized zone of various ore deposits.