edder

plural edders · alternative yedder · alternative ether

1. plural normallyA long flexible stick, rod or other piece of wood worked into the top of hedge stakes, to bind them together.

   The stake-and-edder hedge prevails in this district.

   1796, William Marshall, Rural Economy, I, page 196

   2 more examples

   […] including the making [of] a stake and edder hedge. I had a large quantity of excellent manure out of this ditch, consisting of rotten wood, leaves, &c. &c. &c. But in this experiment I found that our stake and edder hedges are little more to be depended on than the fet ones.

   1771, Arthur Young, A Course of Experimental Agriculture: Containing an Exact Register of All the Business Transacted During Five Years on Near Three Hundred Acres of Various Soils ... The Whole Stated in Near Two Thousand Original Experiments ..., page 318

   The scouring of the ditch is thrown up, a very thin stake and edder hedge is formed, and the rest of the wood made into bavins, and sold principally to bakers, at about a guinea per hundred delivered.

   1802, John Lawrence, The New Farmer's Calendar; Or, Monthly Remembrancer, page 254

present singular third person edders · participle present eddering · participle past eddered · past eddered · alternative yedder · alternative ether

1. obsoletetransitiveTo bind the top of, interweaving edder.

   to edder a hedge

   2 more examples

   […] hedge, with live stakes and layers cut half in two, near the ground, and intertwisted among the stakes sufficiently to maintain their position without eddering the top. The sides of the hedge are cut alternately; […]

   1813, Thomas Batchelor, General View of the Agriculture of the County of Bedford, page 274

   Hazel and ash saplings make good switches, and there are many of these by the roadside, spraying like the forks of a fan. Later they will be used for "eddering" the other side of the lane.

   1950, Alison Uttley, Buckinghamshire, page 5

plural edders

1. An adder or snake.

   winges like a bird she hase, Fete as an edder, a mayden's face, Her kinde I'll take

   1816, J. H. Hansall, The Stranger in Chester