plod
verbEtymology From Middle English *plodden (found only in derivative plodder), probably originally a splash through water and mud, from plodde, pludde (“a puddle”) (whence modern plud). Compare Scots plod, plodge, plodder, dialectal Dutch plodden, plodderen, dialectal German ploddern, Danish pladder (“mire”).
1
To walk or move slowly and heavily or laboriously (+ on, through, over).
- The beast that bears me, tired with my woe, Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,1609, William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 50”, in Shake-speares Sonnets. […], London: By G[eorge] Eld for T[homas] T[horpe] and are to be sold by William Aspley, →OCLC:
- I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, his sea chest following behind him in a handbarrow;1881–1882, Robert Louis Stevenson, chapter 1, in Treasure Island, London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 14 November 1883, →OCLC, part I (The Old Buccaneer), page 1:
2
To trudge over or through.
- Quest[ion]. Where was Ioseph? Answ[er]. It may be, he was playing the Carpenter abrode for all their three livings, but sure it is, he was not idlely plodding the streetes, much lesse tipling in the Taverne with our idle swingers.1596, Henoch Clapham, A Briefe of the Bible, Edinburgh: Robert Walde-grave, page 127:
- 1799, Matthew Gregory Lewis, The Love of Gain, London: J. Bell, p. 50, lines 449-451, […] Speed thou to Lombard-street, Or plod the gambling 'Change with busy feet, 'Midst Bulls and Bears some false report to spread,
1 more example
- Break no rosemary, bright with rime And sparkling to the cruel clime; Nor plod the winter land to look For willows in the icy brook To cast them leafless round him […]1896, A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad, London: The Richards Press, XLVI, pp. 69-70:
3
To toil; to drudge; especially, to study laboriously and patiently.
- On Sundays I keep plodding along at my job.
- 1597, Michael Drayton, “Edward the fourth to Shores wife” in Englands Heroicall Epistles, London: N. Ling, Poore plodding schoolemen, they are farre too low, which by probations, rules and axiom’s goe, He must be still familiar with the skyes, which notes the reuolutions of thine eyes;
4
To extrude (soap, margarine, etc.) through a die plate so it can be cut into billets.