rod
Meanings
noun
- A straight, round stick, shaft, bar, cane, or staff.
- A longitudinal pole used for forming part of a framework such as an awning or tent.
- A long slender usually tapering pole used for angling; fishing rod.
- A stick, pole, or bundle of switches or twigs (such as a birch), used for personal defense or to administer corporal punishment by whipping.
- An implement resembling and/or supplanting a rod (particularly a cane) that is used for corporal punishment, and metonymically called the rod, regardless of its actual shape and composition.
- A stick used to measure distance, by using its established length or task-specific temporary marks along its length, or by dint of specific graduated marks.
- A unit of length equal to 1 pole, a perch, ¹⁄₄ chain, 5+¹⁄₂ yards, 16+¹⁄₂ feet, or exactly 5.0292 meters (these being all equivalent).
- An implement held vertically and viewed through an optical surveying instrument such as a transit, used to measure distance in land surveying and construction layout; an engineer's rod, surveyor's rod, surveying rod, leveling rod, ranging rod. The modern (US) engineer's or surveyor's rod commonly is eight or ten feet long and often designed to extend higher. In former times a surveyor's rod often was a single wooden pole or composed of multiple sectioned and socketed pieces, and besides serving as a sighting target was used to measure distance on the ground horizontally, hence for convenience was of one rod or pole in length, that is, 5+¹⁄₂ yards.
- A unit of area equal to a square rod, 30+¹⁄₄ square yards or ¹⁄₁₆₀ acre.
- A straight bar that unites moving parts of a machine, for holding parts together as a connecting rod or for transferring power as a driveshaft.
- A rod cell: a rod-shaped cell in the eye that is sensitive to light.
- Any of a number of long, slender microorganisms.
verb
- To reinforce concrete with metal rods.
- To furnish with rods, especially lightning rods.
- To penetrate sexually.
- To hot rod.
name
- A nickname for the male given names Rodney and Roderick.
name
- The god of the family, ancestors and fate in Slavic mythology.
noun
- Abbreviation of run-out date (“date on which one completes one's national service”).
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
Etymology tree Old English *rodd Middle English rodde English rod From Middle English rodde, from Old English *rodd or *rodde (attested in dative plural roddum (“rod, pole”)), of uncertain origin, but probably from Proto-Germanic *rudd- (“stick, club”), from Proto-Indo-European *rewdʰ- (“to clear land”). Compare Old Norse rudda (“club”). For the root, compare English rid. Presumably unrelated to Proto-Germanic *rōdō (“rod, pole”).
Synonyms
Related words
Derived words
Translations
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This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.