Other forms: wattles
Wattle is woven sticks used as a building material. Wattle and daub, a wattle fence, wattle panels.
Wattle and daub is the oldest common building method in Britain: a woven lattice of thin branches plastered with a mix of mud, dung and straw, filling the panels between timbers. It works remarkably well and survives in thousands of houses. Note that a wattle is also the fleshy fold hanging under a bird's chin; and that wattle is the Australian name for the acacia.
1nounwattleWoven sticks used as a building material.
“The walls of the medieval cottage were made of wattle covered in mud and straw.”
2nounfleshyThe fleshy fold under a bird's chin.
“The turkey's red wattle wobbled as it gobbled at us.”
wattle is woven sticks, or a bird's fold.
WATTle → a WALL of sticks
Thin sticks pushed in and out of each other until they stand up as a wall.
hooks ontowall
Old English watel meant a hurdle, from a root meaning to turn or weave. The building material, the bird's wattle and the Australian tree all took the name from that weaving.
Proto-Indo-European
*wey- — to turn, wind, bend
Old English
watel
Middle English
wattel
English, today
wattle
Built from
From Middle English wattel, watel, from Old English watel, watul (“hurdle”). Ultimately from Proto-Indo-European wey- (“to turn, wind, bend”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire