daddock

English

Etymology

Compare dialectal English dad (“large piece”), and see -ock.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈdædək/

Noun

daddock (plural daddocks)

1. (UK, dialect) The rotten body of a tree.
   • 1866, Isaac B. Rich, Gazelle: A True Tale of the Great Rebellion, and Other Poems, page 137:

     We crushed the flowers to dust again, And leaped the daddock pile, And hunted, with a careless rein, The foe in savage style.

   • 1873, London Society:

     and you have not enough Of fairness left to tempt a truant hand To pluck you from the daddock in the clough, And give your spirit to the summer land

   • 1890, Emma Rood Tuttle, From Soul to Soul, page 198:

     The partridge drums upon the hill, a daddock old and battered, While, now and then, an oriole lights up a scarlet gleam.

   • 1892, Hudson Tuttle, The Convent of the Sacred Heart, page 4:

     Delicate sensitiveness will turn away in fear and disgust as some mouldering daddock is removed, and lizards, sloes, darting beetles, and plodding snails are dazed by the light.

   • 1898, Gustav Pearlson, Twelve Centuries of Jewish Persecution, page 234:

     Christendom's favouring renegades was of the greatest service to the Hebrew race, for it helped Judaism to despumate her ills and diseases; every tree has its daddock. The blackmailing Jewish apostates were the daddock of Israel.

Derived terms

• daddocky

 

References

• “daddock”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.