Meaning

A straight, round stick, shaft, bar, cane, or staff..

Definitions by Sense

1. A straight, round stick, shaft, bar, cane, or staff.
2. A longitudinal pole used for forming part of a framework such as an awning or tent.
3. (fishing) A long slender usually tapering pole used for angling; fishing rod.
4. A stick, pole, or bundle of switches or twigs (such as a birch), used for personal defense or to administer corporal punishment by whipping.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. (archaic) A unit of length equal to 1 pole, a perch, ¹⁄₄ chain, 5+¹⁄₂ yards, 16+¹⁄₂ feet, or exactly 5.0292 meters (these being all equivalent).
8. 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 (US) 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, 5+¹⁄₂ yards.

Example Sentences

The circus strong man proved his strength by bending an iron rod, and then straightening it.

Which makes the concept known as Rods From God the ultimate form of kinetic weaponry. This theoretical weapon would drop telephone pole sized rods of dense tungsten from a satellite in orbit. Picking up speed with each passing second, the rod would then penetrate the ground and generate an explosion akin to a small nuclear weapon using nothing but gravity for its propulsion.

When I hooked a snake and not a fish, I got so scared I dropped my rod in the water.

So was I brought up: they tell mee, that in all my youth, I never felt rod [translating verges] but twice, and that very lightly.

The judge imposed on the thief a sentence of fifteen strokes with the rod.

I notched a rod and used it to measure the length of rope to cut.

‘And this thicket, so full of a natural art, was in the immediate vicinity, within a few rods, of the dwelling of Madame Deluc, whose boys were in the habit of closely examining the shrubberies about them in search of the bark of the sassafras.’

In one of the villages I saw the next summer a cow tethered by a rope six rods long[…].

Word Forms

• rods
• rodding
• rodded

Synonyms for rod

Related Words

When Should You Use Rod?

Use rod when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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