Definitions

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

  • intransitive verb To walk in or through water or something else that similarly impedes normal movement.
  • intransitive verb To cross or pass through (water, for example) with difficulty.
  • noun The act or an instance of wading.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The act of wading: as, a wade in a brook.
  • noun A place where wading is done; a ford.
  • noun A road. See the quotation.
  • To walk through any substance that impedes the free motion of the limbs; move by stepping through a fluid or other semiresisting medium: as, to wade through water; to wade through sand or snow.
  • To enter in; penetrate.
  • To move or pass with difficulty or labor, real or apparent; make way against hindrances or embarrassments, as depth, obscurity, or resistance, material or mental.
  • To pass or cross by wading; ford: as, to wade a stream.

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

  • noun obsolete Woad.
  • transitive verb To pass or cross by wading.
  • noun colloq. The act of wading.
  • intransitive verb obsolete To go; to move forward.
  • intransitive verb To walk in a substance that yields to the feet; to move, sinking at each step, as in water, mud, sand, etc.
  • intransitive verb Hence, to move with difficulty or labor; to proceed �lowly among objects or circumstances that constantly �inder or embarrass.

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

  • verb intransitive to walk through water or something that impedes progress.
  • verb intransitive to progress with difficulty
  • noun an act of wading

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

  • verb walk (through relatively shallow water)
  • noun English tennis player who won many women's singles titles (born in 1945)

Etymologies

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

[Middle English waden, from Old English wadan.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Old English wadan, from Proto-Germanic *wadanan, from Proto-Indo-European *wadh- "to go". Cognates include Latin vadere "go, walk; rush" (whence English invade, evade).

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Examples

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  • "The U.N. waded into the mess in 1999, deploying 90 political officers and staffers to the Congo to monitor a short-lived cease-fire." WSJ

    July 22, 2012