Other forms: wads
A wad is a thick folded lump of paper, banknotes or chewed gum. Compressed, and roughly the size of a fist.
The money sense is the flashiest, and a wad of notes is what somebody pulls out to impress, with the informal wads of money meaning a great deal of it. There is a practical sense too, since a wad of cotton wool is what a nurse presses on after taking blood. As a verb, wadding something up means crumpling it. Wadding is the soft material inside a quilt.
1nounwadA thick compressed bundle of soft material or paper.
“He pulled a wad of notes out of his back pocket.”
A wad was cloth. The word is probably short for wadmal, from Old Norse váðmál, a coarse woollen stuff: váð, cloth, plus mál, a measure.
Old Norse
váðmál — woolen stuff
Middle English
wadmal — woolen cloth
English, today
wad
Built from
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.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA