Plod

//plɑd// noun, verb

noun, verb ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A slow or labored walk or other motion or activity. uncountable

    "We started at a brisk walk and ended at a plod."

  2. 2
    A puddle. obsolete
  3. 3
    the police, police officers UK, derogatory, mildly, uncountable, usually, with-definite-article
  4. 4
    the act of walking with a slow heavy gait wordnet
  5. 5
    a police officer, especially a low-ranking one. UK, countable, derogatory, mildly, usually
Verb
  1. 1
    To walk or move slowly and heavily or laboriously (+ on, through, over). intransitive

    "The beast that bears me, tired with my woe, Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,"

  2. 2
    walk heavily and firmly, as when weary, or through mud wordnet
  3. 3
    To trudge over or through. transitive

    "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."

  4. 4
    To toil; to drudge; especially, to study laboriously and patiently. intransitive

    "On Sundays I keep plodding along at my job."

  5. 5
    To extrude (soap, margarine, etc.) through a die plate so it can be cut into billets. transitive

Synonyms

All synonyms
slogfootstepold bill'ralesabideamble

Example

More examples

"Life is like a river with a source and a mouth. Each of us has our own river. One person may have one that is twisting and serpentine, with shallow water in the shoals, so one must plod, not float. Another's is stormy, seething, carrying water furiously, flying one hundred thousand miles until it meets another river and loses its impetuosity and noisiness, and then calmly moves forward to the mouth. There are also streams, short and transparent, like the life of a baby."

Etymology

Etymology 1

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”).

Etymology 2

From Middle English plod. Cognate with Danish pladder (“mire”).

Etymology 3

From PC Plod.

Related phrases

For quotations using this termplastic plodpolice officers

More for "plod"

SynonymsSentencesPronunciationTranslate

Next best steps

Find stronger synonymsSee usage examplesCheck pronunciationBrowse writing guides

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.