plod

1. uncountableA slow or labored walk or other motion or activity.

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

   1 more example

   Germany can’t afford to stick to the stately plod into decline that Merkel initiated any longer. Merz will have to act fast, and break things to pull the country out of the quagmire it finds itself in.

   2025 February 23, Lisa Haseldine, “Whatever happens next, Merkelism is finished”, in The Telegraph, archived from the original on 23 Feb 2025

present singular third person plods · participle present plodding · participle past plodded · past plodded

1. intransitiveTo walk or move slowly and heavily or laboriously (+ on, through, over).

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

   1609, William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 50”, in Shake-speares Sonnets. […], London: By G[eorge] Eld for T[homas] T[horpe] and are to be sold by William Aspley, →OCLC

   1 more example

   I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, his sea chest following behind him in a handbarrow;

   1881–1882, Robert Louis Stevenson, chapter 1, in Treasure Island, London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 14 November 1883, →OCLC, part I (The Old Buccaneer), page 1

2. transitiveTo trudge over or through.

   1799, Matthew Gregory Lewis, The Love of Gain, London: J. Bell, p. 50, lines 449-451, […] Speed thou to Lombard-street, Or plod the gambling 'Change with busy feet, 'Midst Bulls and Bears some false report to spread,

   2 more examples

   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.

   1596, Henoch Clapham, A Briefe of the Bible, Edinburgh: Robert Walde-grave, page 127

   Break no rosemary, bright with rime And sparkling to the cruel clime; Nor plod the winter land to look For willows in the icy brook To cast them leafless round him […]

   1896, A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad, London: The Richards Press, XLVI, pp. 69-70

3. intransitiveTo toil; to drudge; especially, to study laboriously and patiently.

   On Sundays I keep plodding along at my job.

   1 more example

   1597, Michael Drayton, “Edward the fourth to Shores wife” in Englands Heroicall Epistles, London: N. Ling, Poore plodding schoolemen, they are farre too low, which by probations, rules and axiom’s goe, He must be still familiar with the skyes, which notes the reuolutions of thine eyes;

4. transitiveTo extrude (soap, margarine, etc.) through a die plate so it can be cut into billets.

plural plods

1. obsoleteA puddle.

plural plods

1. UKderogatorymildlyuncountableusuallywith definite articlethe police, police officers

   Synonyms: police

2. UKcountablederogatorymildlyusuallya police officer, especially a low-ranking one.

   Synonyms: police officer