waddy

plural waddies

1. colloquialA cowboy.

   This is how it was with the old waddies, aint it?

   1992, Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

   1 more example

   If I ever meet one of you Texas waddies that says he never drank from a horse track I think I will shake his hand and give him a Daniel Webster cigar.

   1968, Charles Portis, True Grit

plural waddies · alternative waddie

1. AustraliaA club or heavy stick used by Aboriginal Australians for fighting and hunting; a nulla-nulla.

   And in a free fight, the waddy, like an Irishman's shillaly, figures very prominently.

   1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 71

   4 more examples

   I should have told you that many of the Amity Paint tribe, which is more numerous than the other two settlement tribes, were deficient of spears and shields, having nothing but waddies and boomerangs.

   1839, William Mann, Six Years' Residence in the Australian Provinces, page 156

   1840 May—August, Robert Montgomery Martin (editor), Van Diemen's Land, The Colonial Magazine and Commercial-maritime Journal, Volume 2, page 76, In the mean while women, children, and remote stock-keepers fell under the unerring spears or death-dealing waddies of an enemy, the first indication of whose appearance was consectaneous with the stroke that reft his victim of life.

   As I ran I glanced over my shoulder & saw the blackfellas beating Capois Death hard with their waddies, & they seemed to be trying to break the bones in each of his limbs.

   2001, Richard Flanagan, Gould's Book of Fish, Vintage, published 2016, page 365

   The kids would copy the men to make their own cricket stumps, but no-one was allowed to touch Grandfather's special wood for making waddies.

   2008, Doreen Kartinyeri, Sue Anderson, Doreen Kartinyeri: My Ngarrindjeri Calling, page 20

2. AustraliaA piece of wood; a stick or peg; also, a walking stick.

present singular third person waddies · participle present waddying · participle past waddied · past waddied · alternative waddie

1. AustraliatransitiveTo strike or beat with a waddy.

plural Waddys

1. A surname.