puddle

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English podel, also puddel and poþel.^[2][3][4] Most dictionaries take it as a diminutive, with the suffix -le, of Old English pudd (“ditch, furrow”),^{[2][5][6][4][7][8][9][10]} a word Bosworth–Toller and Clark Hall know from a single gloss.^[11][12] It is compared with Low German pūdel (“puddle”) and German dialect Pfudel (“pool, puddle”),^{[6][13][7][8][9]} and Klein and Etymonline relate it to German pudeln (“to splash in water”), the source of Pudel and so of poodle.^[10][14] Merriam-Webster adds a possible link with Old English puduc (“wart”) and pudding,^[15] and Word Origins traces pool to the same West Germanic root.^[16] The OED's revised entry (2007) instead calls the origin uncertain: it finds the derivation from pudd, a word attested only once, semantically unlikely, and thinks the word probably related to Middle Dutch podel, poedel, seen in podelpoel (“mud pool”) and perhaps in a late 13th-century place name in South Holland.^[17] The verb is pothelen, from the noun;^[6][15] the OED compares Dutch poedelen (“to paddle, play in water”) and Low German puddeln (“to move around in water, splash”).^[17] puddler and puddeln, to puddle iron, are borrowings from English.^[17]

Earliest recorded meaning

A small pool of dirty water, or a muddy, miry place: before 1338, in Mannyng's Chronicle of England,^[6][2] and about 1390 in Robert of Sicily, where the porter and his men throw King Robert into a podel.^[2][17]

Semantic evolution

Ayto notes that in Middle English the word was often used of quite large bodies of water, what would now be called a pond or a pool, and that by the 17th century it had narrowed to its present meaning;^[9][14][7] Johnson (1755) defined it as "a small muddy lake; a dirty plash", and recorded Skinner's derivation from Latin puteolus and Junius's from an old Bavarian word for dirt.^[18] Figurative uses followed early: a corrupting state of life from about 1520, a confused mixture or muddle from 1587, and muddy or stagnant water as a mass noun from 1555.^[17] From 1640 a puddle could be a small pool of any liquid, or a patch of light;^[17] from 1869, humorously, the sea, especially the North Atlantic, as in across the puddle;^[17][19] in rowing from 1920, the swirl left by an oar; and in welding from 1935, a pool of molten metal.^[17] In Scottish and Midland English from 1782 a puddle was also a bungler.^[17] The verb meant at first to dabble or poke about in shallow water or mud (1440, in the Promptorium Parvulorum),^[17][6] then to make water muddy (1593) and to muddle a person's mind, as in Shakespeare's Othello.^[17] Engineering gave it the sense of working clay into a watertight mass (1774), and the clay itself is puddle from 1791;^[17] from 1790 to puddle molten pig iron was to stir it in a furnace to remove carbon.^[17][14][4]

Timeline

• before 1338 – a small pool of dirty water.^[6][2]
• 1440 – verb, to dabble in water or mud.^[17][6]
• c. 1520 – a morally corrupting state.^[17]
• 1555 – muddy or stagnant water.^[17]
• 1587 – a confused mixture; a muddle.^[17]
• 1593 – verb, to make water muddy (obsolete by 1870).^[17]
• before 1616 – verb, to muddle someone's mind.^[17]
• 1640 – a small pool of any liquid.^[17]
• 1774 – verb, to work clay into a watertight mass.^[17]
• 1790 – verb, to puddle iron.^[17]
• 1791 – wet clay used to line canals and dams.^[17]
• 1869 – humorously, the sea.^[17]
• 1920 – in rowing, the swirl of water left by an oar.^[17]
• 1935 – a pool of molten metal in welding.^[17]

Meanings

Noun

1. A small, shallow pool of water, especially of rain or muddy water, on the ground: The children jumped in every puddle on the way home.^[20][15][17]
2. A small pool of any liquid, or a patch of light resembling one: a puddle of spilled milk on the table.^[20][15][17]
3. A worked mixture of wet clay and sand, used as a watertight lining for canals, ponds and embankments.^[20][17]
4. (rowing) The eddy left in the water by the blade of an oar after a stroke.^[20][17]
5. (humorous) The sea, especially the Atlantic Ocean.^[17][19]

Verb

1. To dabble or wade in puddles, mud or shallow water.^[20][15][17]
2. To mess about or putter.^[20][15]
3. To make (clay or earth) into puddle, or to line something with puddle.^[20][17]
4. To subject molten pig iron to puddling.^[20][17]

Word family

• puddly
• puddler
• puddle-jumper

Related words

• poodle
• pool
• puddling

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
4. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
7. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b c Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
10. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
11. ^ Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
12. ^ Clark Hall, J. R. (1960), A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, 4th ed., with a supplement by H. D. Meritt, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
13. ^ Holthausen, Ferdinand (1934), Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
14. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
15. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
16. ^ Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
17. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
18. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
19. ^ a b Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
20. ^ a b c d e f g h Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins