Meanings
alternative druxey
- dialectalobsoleteHaving decayed spots or streaks of a whitish colour; rotten, decayed.
2 more examples
[…] and as the lapse of time required for seasoning would allow the decomposition of very bad druxy knots to display itself, there seems to be more reason for attaching importance to the use of seasoned timber in the framework of ships. […] all unprepared timber, let it be ever so sound, free from sap, druxy knots, […] or ground shakes.
1860 June 1, Journal of the Society of Arts, volume 8, page 562After the gale, the tree has had sufficient vitality to continue its growth, and so enfold its crippled stem in a new sheath of sound wood. Fig. 10 represents decayed or “druxy” knots. Sometimes such knots are met with embedded in fairly sound wood, but in most cases, the effects of the decay run far down into the parent stem.
1905, Scientific American: Supplement, volume 59, page 24433
Origin
From drix (rotten part of wood) [Term?] + -y (the forms drixy, droxy and drucksy occur in various dialects), of unclear origin. The adjective is attested since at least the 1580s, in The Arte of English Poesie. One early (1913) suggestion is that drucksy is connected to (perhaps metathesis of) Scottish durk (“spoil, ruin”), but that sense appears to be a simple extension of the more usual meaning of durk, "to stab with a dirk" (itself a word of obscure origin).
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
druxy. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/druxy
“druxy.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/druxy. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “druxy,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/druxy.
Source: druxy on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.