Other forms: wedding, wedded, weds
To wed is to marry somebody. Wed in June, newly wed, wedded to the idea.
It is old-fashioned or poetic in ordinary speech, where marry does the work, but wed survives in headlines because it is short. Wedded to an idea means unable to give it up. The past can be wed or wedded, and both are correct.
1verbwedTo marry somebody.
“The couple will wed in a small church by the sea next summer.”
wed is a marrying.
Old English weddian meant to pledge, from a Germanic root for a pledge. A wedding was first the giving of a promise.
Proto-Indo-European
*wedʰ- — to pledge
Proto-Germanic
*wadjōną — to pledge
Proto-West Germanic
*waddjōn
Old English
weddian — to pledge; wed
Middle English
wedden
English, today
wed
Built from
From Middle English wedden, weddien, from Old English weddian (“to pledge; wed”), from Proto-West Germanic waddjōn, from Proto-Germanic wadjōną (“to pledge”), from wadją (“pledge”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European wedʰ- (“to pledge”). Cognate with Scots wed, wod, wad (“to wed”), stq wädje (“to bet, wager”), West Frisian wedzje (“to bet, wager”), Low German and Dutch wedden (“to bet”), German wetten (“to bet”), Danish vædde (“to bet”), Swedish vädja (“to appeal”), Icelandic veðja (“to bet”); more distantly, to Sanskrit वधू (“bride”). Related also to gage, engage, and wage.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA