English

would

/wəd/
Used to form the "anterior future", or "future in the past", indicating a futurity relative to a past time.

    Etymology graph

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    Origin

    From Old English wolde, past tense of willan, predecessor of will.

    The loss of /l/ in this word is probably due to weak stress, as in should and could (though in the latter, the /l/ was due to the analogy of the former two).

    From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

    Lineage

    • inheritedOld Englishwolde

    Sources