edder

English

Etymology 1

From Middle English *edre, *eder, from Old English eder, edor (“hedge, fence”), from Proto-Germanic *edaraz, *eduraz (“hedge, border”). Cognate with Old High German etar.

Alternative forms

• yedder, ether

Pronunciation

• (rhotic) IPA^(key): /ˈɛdɚ/, /ˈɛðɚ/
• (non-rhotic) IPA^(key): /ˈɛdə/, /ˈɛðə/

Noun

edder (plural edders)

1. (usually in the plural) A long flexible stick, rod or other piece of wood worked into the top of hedge stakes, to bind them together.
   • 1771, Arthur Young, A Course of Experimental Agriculture: Containing an Exact Register of All the Business Transacted During Five Years on Near Three Hundred Acres of Various Soils ... The Whole Stated in Near Two Thousand Original Experiments ..., page 318:

     […] including the making [of] a stake and edder hedge. I had a large quantity of excellent manure out of this ditch, consisting of rotten wood, leaves, &c. &c. &c. But in this experiment I found that our stake and edder hedges are little more to be depended on than the fet ones.

   • 1796, William Marshall, Rural Economy, I, page 196:

     The stake-and-edder hedge prevails in this district.

   • 1802, John Lawrence, The New Farmer's Calendar; Or, Monthly Remembrancer, page 254:

     The scouring of the ditch is thrown up, a very thin stake and edder hedge is formed, and the rest of the wood made into bavins, and sold principally to bakers, at about a guinea per hundred delivered.

Verb

edder (third-person singular simple present edders, present participle eddering, simple past and past participle eddered)

1. (obsolete, transitive) To bind the top of, interweaving edder.

   to edder a hedge

   • 1813, Thomas Batchelor, General View of the Agriculture of the County of Bedford, page 274:

     […] hedge, with live stakes and layers cut half in two, near the ground, and intertwisted among the stakes sufficiently to maintain their position without eddering the top. The sides of the hedge are cut alternately; […]

   • 1950, Alison Uttley, Buckinghamshire, page 5:

     Hazel and ash saplings make good switches, and there are many of these by the roadside, spraying like the forks of a fan. Later they will be used for "eddering" the other side of the lane.

References

• Joseph Wright, editor (1900), “EDDER”, in The English Dialect Dictionary: […], volumes II (D–G), London: Henry Frowde, […], publisher to the English Dialect Society, […]; New York, N.Y.: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, →OCLC.

Etymology 2

Variant of adder.

Noun

edder (plural edders)

1. An adder or snake.
   • 1816, J. H. Hansall, The Stranger in Chester:

     winges like a bird she hase,
     Fete as an edder, a mayden's face,
     Her kinde I'll take

References

• “edder”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

Anagrams

• dered, dreed