Eddy
name, noun, verb, slang ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A current of air or water running back, or in an opposite direction to the main current.
"In the bow old Dobbs fought the stream cunningly, twisting the nose into eddies and backwaters, taking advantage when he could of set of current, and when he could not, paddling doggedly, not so powerfully, perhaps, as his partner, but with equal steadiness."
- 2 A marijuana edible. slang
"I never really was into weed until recently. On my "Chrissy Chaos" podcast on Patreon, I do a segment every Friday called the "Chris and Eddy Show" 'cause I call edibles "eddys,' so I take an eddy and I do a show."
- 3 a miniature whirlpool or whirlwind resulting when the current of a fluid doubles back on itself wordnet
- 4 A circular current; a whirlpool.
"And smiling eddies dimpled on the main."
- 1 To form an eddy; to move in, or as if in, an eddy; to move in a circle. intransitive
"He waded out, the stream eddying around his legs."
- 2 flow in a circular current, of liquids wordnet
- 1 A diminutive of Edward, Edgar, Edwin, or other male given names beginning with Ed-.
- 2 A surname.
Example
More examples"An eddy is a circular current of water."
Etymology
From Middle English eddy, from Old English edēa, from ed- (“turning, back, reverse”) + ēa (“water”), equivalent to ed- + ea. Ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁é, and, consequently, cognate with Latin et. Related also to Danish ide (“eddy”), Swedish eda (“eddy”), Norwegian ida, ia, ea (“eddy”), Icelandic iða (“eddy”).
Clipping of edible.
Diminutives + -y.
Related phrases
More for "eddy"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.