The trouble with "trynewoed"

For this week’s Globe column, I wrote about the revamped OED Online, which is celebrating its relaunch by opening its doors to all through Feb. 5. I had to go back to check the login instructions, and they were simple enough: For both username and password, enter trynewoed. Interesting word, I thought -- what could it mean?

Yes, it was a supremely geeky-moronic moment. I thought this was an Anglo-Saxon word – a compound that had some delightful ancient meaning related to language treasures. I had actually typed tryne into the OED search box before it dawned on me … right. Try new OED. Of course.

Since I'd already wandered so far off course, I went ahead and clicked "search," and I felt just a little bit less moronic when it turned out that yes, tryne did have a brief existence, centuries ago, as one of the spellings of treen “made of tree, wooden” (and also of the non-Old English-derived words train and trine). Woed was also in the OED, as a Middle English past tense of wade and also as one ME spelling of the obsolete word wood meaning “nuts.” So trynewoed MIGHT have meant “tree crazy" or "wood mad." It just didn't.

My dyslexic episode has a silver lining, though: It reminded me of Wishydig, a language blog I haven't heard from in a while. As blogger Michael Covarrubias explained in a 2007 post, the name really is (not just in my delusions) Old English. But like my fictional trynewoed, it can be divided more than one way:  

Wishydig is an Old English compound word meaning "wise thinking." The first word in the compound, wis, is clear. The second word, hydig, is a variant form of hygdig (adjective form of hygd, mind, thought) meaning heedful, careful, prudent. 

Ever since I read that, I've been trying unable to decide whether to (mentally) pronounce the word as wis-hydig or as wishy-dig -- and not succeeding. Thanks a lot, Michael -- if only I could hope that trynewoed would torment  you back!