puddle

From Middle English podel, diminutive of Old English pudd (“ditch”), from Proto-Germanic *puddo (compare Low German Pudel (“puddle”)).

• IPA^(key): /ˈpʌdəl/
• Rhymes: -ʌdəl

puddle (plural puddles)

1. A small pool of water, usually on a path or road. [from 14th c.]
2. (now dialectal) Stagnant or polluted water. [from 16th c.]
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, IV.5:

     And fast beside a little brooke did pas / Of muddie water, that like puddle stank […].

   • 1624, John Smith, Generall Historie, in Kupperman 1988, p. 90:

     searching their habitations for water, we could fill but three barricoes, and that such puddle, that never till then we ever knew the want of good water.

3. A homogeneous mixture of clay, water, and sometimes grit, used to line a canal or pond to make it watertight. [from 18th c.]

puddle (third-person singular simple present puddles, present participle puddling, simple past and past participle puddled)

1. To form a puddle.
2. To play or splash in a puddle.
3. To process iron by means of puddling.
4. To line a canal with puddle (clay).
5. To collect ideas, especially abstract concepts, into rough subtopics or categories, as in study, research or conversation.
6. To make (clay, loam, etc.) dense or close, by working it when wet, so as to render impervious to water.
7. To make foul or muddy; to pollute with dirt; to mix dirt with (water).
   • Shakespeare

     Some unhatched practice […] / Hath puddled his clear spirit.

puddle

1. First-person singular present of puddeln.
2. First-person singular subjunctive I of puddeln.
3. Third-person singular subjunctive I of puddeln.
4. Imperative singular of puddeln.