"Forest" was first attested in English in the late 1200's, from the Norman word meaning the same thing. This in turn came from Vulgar Latin foresta, meaning the outer part of a woodland preserved for game and royal hunting. The Middle English term frith had the same meaning, implying a sparser kind of woodland. It still has this meaning in English today. It comes from the proto-Into-European word meaning a pinewood, perkos, or coniferous fir-tree woodland, which still carries this meaning in the Old High German term forst. Frith is therefore an available term to describe this kind of woodland that has since not been used much in English. Frith also appears in English as a word descending from the proto-Germanic frithu, seen in modern German as Frieden, which has the meaning of peace or security. It is postulated that the late Latin term foresta also comes from this Germanic root, meaning that "frith" itself would be the more correct term for a woodland than "forest".
The second term displaced by the modern general term forest is the word relating to the modern Germanic Wald. This ancient term denoted an area covered with woods. It denoted a preserved forest, the forest as a wild place, seen in Middle English as wald, and later as weald in modern English which still means the same thing. Weald also had an Anglian variant as wald; this shows that the term retained its primary meaning as a separate term from wold. Wold originally had the same meaning and was a synonym for both weald and the unchanged Anglian wald, but grew to mean an unforested, open rolling country around the time of 1200, as Etymonline says due to a "Scandinavian influence, or a testimony to the historical deforestation of Britain". In modern English it exclusively denotes hilly tracts of land, and its usage for the obsolete sense cannot contest with this modern contradictory one. Even if one goes to great lengths to use "wold" in the context of a forest, there will always exist that ambiguity because of the polarity of the old and new meanings, and the new meaning will always hold precedence of the old if it denotes such a specifically opposite thing. This is something that I dislike, and I truly wish that "wold" could be returned to its previous meaning, being my favored of the possible three words. The other terms are weald and wald, the latter remaining from Middle English and Anglian, and the former still being attested in Modern English. All modern dictionaries such as Dictionary.com and Merriam-Webster list weald to mean a heavily forested area, wild or uncultivated.
As a side note, the modern Scots term "wald" means the same as wold, that is, a moor or open country. Therefore calling a forest a wald may confuse the reader with the Scots term. There is an area in England called "the Weald", pronounced as "willd", which is a once heavily wooded region in Sussex. The areas that have been deforested, as well as the formerly forested areas of England, have given rise to the usage of wold to mean an open country, which weald has also been used as in rare instances. Weald is attested with the pronunciation of "wield", though its use in Sussex as "willd" may also be suitable. English still has weald and wald at its disposal as terms still meaning "forest".
The third term displaced by forest is the word "shaw", coming from Middle English scough, probably pronounced the same way. It is a dated term in Modern English reduced to the meaning of a strip of woodland usually five to fifteen meters in width, but poetically I suggest that it could be used to mean a forest. It is a small wood or a grove. It is also attested as meaning thicket, but the usual absence of undergrowth in a grove and the dense growth of plant life in a thicket, which may or may not be trees as opposed to shrubs or bushes, makes the analogy between a usual shaw and a thicket unlikely. Shaws may be used as coppices or thickets however. Mainly the nature of a shaw is in its size. My suggestion of its usage as forest comes from its analogy with the Norwegian word skogen, which is the general term for forest.
Shaws should not be confused with hedges, otherwise known as haws or hedgerows, which are smaller, usually artificially composed of a single row of trees or shrubs in order to mark a boundary on the land. This is a thicket of bushes, sometimes trees, which can also be used for decoration in a garden or in the infamous hedge-mazes. This is a cognate with the German term Hain, which means a grove, and therefore has a different meaning, but is also cognate with the German terms Hag and Hecke, which do mean exactly a haw.
In conclusion, there are three perfectly fine words for describing woodland that have seen a great absence in modern literature, mostly because of ignorance concerning these words. Friths are lightly forested areas, usually of pinetrees, or otherwise the area of the wood that isn't deep. Frith was also a verb meaning to protect, in its association with security, and therefore could be seen as a protected area. It is a light forest, sometimes a wood at the edge of a larger forest. A forest itself is a weald, usually wild or uncultivated, and deeper than the familiar frith. We may also call a weald a wald if situation permits. A shaw is a lesser stretch of forest, generally a small area of woods, which may be grove-like or thicket-like in nature. All three of these terms are attested in Modern English, yet are much unseen.
06 August 2013 Edit: As a side note, I suggest that the Middle English term scough be brought back into usage, denoting the same thing as the modern Norwegian skogen, and pronounces as "skoe". The plural could be either scoughs or scoughen.
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