cuddy

See also: Cuddy

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈkʌdi/

  • Audio (RP)

    (file)

• Rhymes: -ʌdi

Etymology 1

Origin uncertain. Perhaps a contraction from Dutch kajuit (“cabin”).

Noun

cuddy (plural cuddies)

1. (nautical) A cabin, for the use of the captain, in the after part of a sailing ship under the poop deck.
   • 1808–10, William Hickey, Memoirs of a Georgian Rake, Folio Society 1995, p. 77:

     Being summoned to the cuddy to breakfast, I had not been there five minutes when I turned deadly sick, was obliged to retire to my cot […] .

   • 1848-50, William Makepeace Thackeray, Pendennis, ch 44:

     It was a strong measure I own, walking into your cuddy, and calling for drink as if I was the Captain […]

   • 1900, Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim, ch 6:

     The sight of that watery-eyed old Jones mopping his bald head with a red cotton handkerchief, the sorrowing yelp of the dog, the squalor of that fly-blown cuddy which was the only shrine of his memory, threw a veil of inexpressibly mean pathos over Brierly’s remembered figure, the posthumous revenge of fate for that belief in his own splendour which had almost cheated his life of its legitimate terrors.

2. a small cupboard or closet.
3. (Scotland, Durham, Northumbria) A donkey, especially one driven by a huckster or greengrocer.
   • 1932, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Sunset Song, Polygon 2006 (A Scots Quair), p. 31:

     folk said the cuddy had bided so long with Pooty that whenever it opened its mouth to give a bit bray it started to stutter.

4. (UK, mining) A pony that works in a mine.
5. (dated) A blockhead; a lout.
   • 1840-1841, Thomas Hood, "Miss Kilmansegg and Her Precious Leg"

     It cost more tricks and trouble, by half,
     Than it takes to exhibit a six-legged calf
     To a boothful of country cuddies.

6. A lever mounted on a tripod for lifting stones, leveling up railroad ties, etc..

Etymology 2

From Scots; compare Gaelic cudaig, cudainn, or English cuttlefish, or cod.

Alternative forms

• cuddie, cudden, cuth

Noun

cuddy (plural cuddies)

1. The coalfish (Pollachius carbonarius).

References

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “cuddy” in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.)