dodge

Uncertain, but possibly from Old English dydrian, by way of dialectal dodd or dodder.

• IPA^(key): /dɒdʒ/

• Audio (US)

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• Rhymes: -ɒdʒ

dodge (third-person singular simple present dodges, present participle dodging, simple past and past participle dodged)

1. (transitive, intransitive) To avoid (something) by moving suddenly out of the way.

   He dodged traffic crossing the street.

2. (transitive, figuratively) To avoid; to sidestep.

   The politician dodged the question with a meaningless reply.

   • 2006, Edwin Black, chapter 2, in Internal Combustion‎:

     The popular late Middle Ages fictional character Robin Hood, dressed in green to symbolize the forest, dodged fines for forest offenses and stole from the rich to give to the poor. But his appeal was painfully real and embodied the struggle over wood.

3. (archaic) To go hither and thither.
4. (photography) To decrease the exposure for certain areas of a print in order to make them darker (compare burn).
5. (transitive) To follow by dodging, or suddenly shifting from place to place.
   • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

     A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist! / And still it neared and neared: / As if it dodged a water-sprite, / It plunged and tacked and veered.

   • 1859, Charles Dickens, The Haunted House

     Miss Griffin screamed after me, the faithless Vizier ran after me, and the boy at the turnpike dodged me into a corner, like a sheep, and cut me off.

6. (transitive, intransitive, dated) To trick somebody.

• (to avoid): duck, evade, fudge, skirt, shun

• dodge a bullet
• dodger
• dodgy

dodge (plural dodges)

1. An act of dodging.
2. A trick, evasion or wile.
3. (slang) A line of work.
   • 1992, Time (volume 140, issues 1-9, page 74)

     In the marketing dodge, that is known as rub-off.

   • 2009, Chris Knopf, Head Wounds (page 233)

     Through a series of unconventional circumstances, some my fault, Jackie had found herself working both civil and criminal sides of the real estate dodge, which put her among a rare breed of attorney […]