cuddy

See also: Cuddy

English

Pronunciation

• 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
   • 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) 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. (Britain, mining) A pony that works in a mine.
5. (dated) A blockhead; a lout.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Hood to this entry?)

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

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Knight to this entry?)

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).

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 The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.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.)