Forest or Woods...What's the Difference?
We often use these words interchangeably, but they have distinct histories and meanings.
Where I grew up, a plot of timber-covered land out in back of a farmstead might be called “the woods,” but it probably wouldn’t be called a forest. That would be a bit too grandiose. So, is the difference really about size? It’s not quite as simple as that.
Let’s start with a little etymology for all you word-nerds out there, because history often provides useful context.
The word forest is Old French, and it probably came to English in the wake of the Norman conquest (1066 CE). But its deeper origin can be found in the Latin foris, which shares an Indo-European root with the word “door.” In Latin, foris came to mean something “beyond the door,” or outside.
As Kevin Stroud points out in his wonderful History of English Podcast, to understand forest it may be useful to view it alongside another French word that entered the English language around the same time — park. A park was originally a closed-off area for “beasts of the chase,” or a game preserve. The key feature of a park was that it was enclosed or somehow fenced in. A forest, by contrast, came to mean the wild area beyond the fence.
In England, the term forest acquired an even more specific legal meaning, as Norman rulers used it to designate royal hunting grounds. Land set aside as royal forests could not be used by anyone else for hunting, cutting of timber, development, etc. It was to be left “natural,” and anyone caught disturbing it could be severely punished, even receiving the death penalty. And these Norman rulers claimed a lot of land as royal forests. In the first couple of centuries after the conquest, it’s estimated that one-third of England was set for this purpose. That’s why, by the thirteenth century, a forest was defined as “an ‘extensive tree-covered district,’ especially one set aside for royal hunting and under the protection of the king.”
The term “woods” entered the language in a very different way. Rather than being borrowed from French or Latin, wood is a native English word, having evolved from Old English wudu, which itself had proto-Germanic roots (pun intended). In today’s usage, wood can refer to a tree, a group of trees, or even the material derived from a tree.
In a basic sense, woods, or woodland, is simply tree-covered land. It might refer to land that is fenced in or contained (like a park), but it doesn’t need to. Likewise, it might be used to describe land that is set aside for a particular use, such as hunting. But that doesn’t necessarily need to be the case, either. Woods, then, is a more general term than either forest or park.
That also seems to be the case in modern usage, at least in the way people commonly use these terms. There are official definitions that are a bit more specific, however.
Consider the definitions used by the FAO, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. Forest is “land with a tree canopy cover of more than 10 percent and area of more than 0.5 ha. Forests are determined both by the presence of trees and the absence of other predominant land uses. The trees should be able to reach a minimum height of 5 m.”
There is also a definition for “other wooded land,” which might be used as a stand-in for “woods.” They describe it as having “either a crown cover (or equivalent stocking level) of 5 to10 percent of trees able to reach a height of 5 m at maturity; or a crown cover (or equivalent stocking level) of more than 10 percent of trees not able to reach a height of 5 m at maturity; or with shrub or bush cover of more than 10 percent.”
A forest must be at least .5 hectares (1.24 acres) according to this definition, but there seems to be a qualitative difference as well as a difference in area. Forests are characterized by the predominance of trees at least 5 meters (16 ft, 5 inches) tall, as well as a denser canopy cover. Other woodland has some tall trees but is more mixed and has a sparser canopy. It isn’t dominated by trees in the same way as a forest.
A similar distinction is made by the U.S. National Vegetation Classification system, which defines a forest as having 60% to 100% of the land covered by tree canopy, as opposed to only 25% to 60% for woods. Take a look at the Forest Atlas of the U.S. Forest Service, if you’re interested in what qualifies.
Meanwhile, the Bureau of Land Management suggests that the term “woods” is used more to describe sparse, dry areas, such as those in the U.S. Southwest, whereas forest typically refers to areas that get more rainfall and have denser vegetation.
As you can tell, there is some ambiguity in how these terms are deployed, but generally speaking, it appears that the term forest is reserved for land covered in bigger, thicker timber. At the same time, it wouldn’t necessarily be inappropriate to refer to this same land as woods.
It seems that all forests can be woods, but not all woods are forests.
And that, I think, is the answer to our question. Woods is a broader, more versatile, more general term for tree-covered land. Forest is a particular type of woods that is characterized by more area, larger trees, and a thicker canopy.
First published in The New Outdoors