puddle

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English

Puddles in a car park.

Etymology

From Middle English podel, diminutive of Old English pudd (“ditch”), from Proto-Germanic *puddaz (compare Low German Pudel (“puddle”), Middle High German podel (“quagmire, mudhole”), Hunsrik Puttel, dialectal German Pfudel (“puddle”), German pudeln (“to splash about”)), ultimately imitative.

Pronunciation

Noun

puddle (plural puddles)

  1. A small pool of water, usually on a path or road. [from 14th c.]
  2. (now dialectal) Stagnant or polluted water. [from 16th c.]
    • 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, IV.5:
      And fast beside a little brooke did pas / Of muddie water, that like puddle stank […].
    • 1624, John Smith, Generall Historie, in Kupperman 1988, p. 90:
      searching their habitations for water, we could fill but three barricoes, and that such puddle, that never till then we ever knew the want of good water.
  3. A homogeneous mixture of clay, water, and sometimes grit, used to line a canal or pond to make it watertight. [from 18th c.]
  4. (rowing) The ripple left by the withdrawal of an oar from the water.
    • 1969, Charles Cuthbert Brown, Malay Sayings (page 88)
      I had only to see the 'puddle' to know that your paddle made it.
    • 2007, Rowing News (volume 14, number 5, page 36)
      As the blade exits the water the puddle is very tight and dark. It is also very quiet.

Translations

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

Verb

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  1. To form a puddle.
  2. To play or splash in a puddle.
  3. (entomology) Of butterflies, to congregate at a puddle.
  4. To process iron, gold, etc., by means of puddling.
  5. To line a canal with puddle (clay).
  6. To collect ideas, especially abstract concepts, into rough subtopics or categories, as in study, research or conversation.
  7. To make (clay, loam, etc.) dense or close, by working it when wet, so as to render impervious to water.
  8. To make foul or muddy; to pollute with dirt; to mix dirt with (water).
    • (Can we date this quote by Shakespeare and provide title, author’s full name, and other details?)
      Some unhatched practice […] / Hath puddled his clear spirit.

Translations

German

Verb

puddle

  1. (deprecated template usage) First-person singular present of puddeln.
  2. (deprecated template usage) First-person singular subjunctive I of puddeln.
  3. (deprecated template usage) Third-person singular subjunctive I of puddeln.
  4. (deprecated template usage) Imperative singular of puddeln.
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