Dodman
name, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A land-based snail. East-Anglia, dialectal
"Yt is as great pyte to se a woman wepe / As yt is to se a sely dodman crepe, / Or, as ye wold say, a sely goose go barefote."
- 2 A snail's shell. East-Anglia, dialectal
"DODMAN. A snail. Norfolk. Also, a snail-shell."
- 3 Any shellfish which casts its shell, such as a lobster. East-Anglia, dialectal
"The Creatures that caſt their Skin are, the Snake, the Viper, the Grashopper, the Lizard, the Silk-worm, &c. Thoſe that caſt their Shell are, the Lobſter, the Crab, the Cra-fish, the Hodmandod or Dodman, the Tortoise, &c. The old Skins are found, but the old Shells never: So as it is like they ſcale off, and crumble away by degrees."
- 4 A surveyor. East-Anglia, dialectal, rare
"At Wilmington in Sussex, the Long Man, with his 240 feet length cut into the turf on the hill-side[…], the largest and perhaps the earliest representation of prehistoric man in England, carries two staves. Now the soldier carries but one spear, the shepherd one crook, the pedestrian one staff, the farmer one pike. The surveyor alone carries two rods. The Long Man is the dod-man, the prehistoric surveyor."
- 1 A surname.
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"Yt is as great pyte to se a woman wepe / As yt is to se a sely dodman crepe, / Or, as ye wold say, a sely goose go barefote."
Etymology
Possibly dod (“(archaic) rounded, bare hilltop”) + -man, in the sense of a creature carrying a hill on its back. The word dod is from dod (“to clip, cut or lop off”), from Middle English dodden (“to shave, shear; to trim (a plant); to poll (cattle); to cut off (someone's head)”), from dod, dodde (“measure of grain”), from Old English. The surveyor sense appears to be based on a misconception by English amateur archaeologist and author Alfred Watkins (1855–1935) in his book The Old Straight Track (1925).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.