popple

• pople

• IPA^(key): /ˈpɒpl̩/

Middle English popul, popil, from Old English popul, from Latin populus

popple (plural popples)

1. (dialectal) poplar
   • 1911, Highways and byways of the Great Lakes, The Macmillan company, page 264

     Some of them had recently built a pulp mill, and he called my attention to the young growths of "popple" we could see from the car window and remarked: "There's good pulp material in those trees, but it's not easy to get 'em cut. You'll strike lots of Catholic lumber-jacks who won't have anything to do with cutting a popple tree, and they won't cross a bridge or sleep in a house that has popple wood in it. There's a tradition that the cross on which Christ was crucified was of popple, and they say the wood was cursed on that account.

Middle English poplen, possibly from Middle Dutch, of imitative origin

popple (plural popples)

1. Choppy water; the motion or sound of agitated water (as from boiling or wind).
   • 1928, Lawrence R. Bourne, chapter 17, in Well Tackled!‎:

     Commander Birch was a trifle uneasy when he found there was more than a popple on the sea; it was, in fact, distinctly choppy.

popple (third-person singular simple present popples, present participle poppling, simple past and past participle poppled)

1. Of water, to move in a choppy, bubbling, or tossing manner.
2. To move quickly up and down; to bob up and down, like a cork on rough water.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Cotton to this entry?)

• popple at OneLook Dictionary Search
• popple in Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged © 2002
• popple in the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition