A stick, pole, or bundle of switches or twigs (such as a birch), used for personal defense or to administer corporal punishment by whipping.
An implement resembling and/or supplanting a rod (particularly a cane) that is used for corporal punishment, and metonymically called the rod, regardless of its actual shape and composition.
A stick used to measure distance, by using its established length or task-specific temporary marks along its length, or by dint of specific graduated marks.
An implement held vertically and viewed through an optical surveying instrument such as a transit, used to measure distance in land surveying and construction layout; an engineer's rod, surveyor's rod, surveying rod, leveling rod, ranging rod. The modern engineer's or surveyor's rod commonly is eight or ten feet long and often designed to extend higher. In former times a surveyor's rod often was a single wooden pole or composed of multiple sectioned and socketed pieces, and besides serving as a sighting target was used to measure distance on the ground horizontally, hence for convenience was of one rod or pole in length, that is, yards.
A hot rod, an automobile or other passenger motor vehicle modified to run faster and often with exterior cosmetic alterations, especially one based originally on a pre-1940s model or (currently) denoting any older vehicle thus modified.
A rod-shaped object that appears in photographs or videos traveling at high speed, not seen by the person recording the event, often associated with extraterrestrial entities.
A Cuisenaire rod.
A coupling rod or connecting rod, which links the driving wheels of a steam locomotive.
From Middle English rodde, from Old English *rodd or *rodde (attested in dative plural roddum), of uncertain origin, but probably from Proto-Germanic *rudd-, from Proto-Indo-European *rewdʰ-. Compare Old Norse rudda. For the root, compare English rid. Presumably unrelated to Proto-Germanic *rōdō ("rod, pole").
Modern English dictionary
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