Word.ws English Dictionary

addlings

addlings noun: earnings.

Noun

addlings pl (plural only)

  1. (UK, Yorkshire, archaic, dialectal, plural, plural-only) Earnings.
    • He din’t heve mich i t’way o addlins but it wor just enuff to get by.
    • […] addlings, wages received for work. A gentleman has informed me, that in Nottinghamshire, and throughout the north, with some variation of sound, addle and addlings are now in use.1818, Samuel Johnson with H[enry] J[ohn] Todd, A Dictionary of the English Language; in which the Words are Deduced from their Originals; and Illustrated in their Different Significations, by...

Examples of addlings in a sentence

  • "Hard addlings," money laboriously acquired.1855, "An inhabitant" [pseudonym; Francis Kildale Robinson], A Glossary of Yorkshire Words and Phrases, Collected in Whitby and the...
  • Short harvests make short addlings [earnings]. – YORKSHIRE.1893, Richard Inwards, Weather Lore: A Collection of Proverbs, Sayings, and Rules Concerning the Weather, London: E. Stock, →OCLC, page 8:
  • My Dunfanaghy correspondent has also heard the noun addlings, though not of late.1999, Diarmaid Ó Muirithe, The Words We Use: Collection 3, Dublin: Four Courts Press, →ISBN, page 33:

Forms of addlings

alternative formaddlins
alternative form (rare)addling

Origin of addlings

From addle + -ing.

Questions about addlings

What does addlings mean?
Addlings means earnings.
How do you use addlings in a sentence?
"Hard addlings," money laboriously acquired.
What part of speech is addlings?
Addlings is a noun.

Words near addlings in the dictionary

  1. addlepatedness
  2. addlepates
  3. addles
  4. Addlestone
  5. addling
  6. addlings
  7. addlins
  8. ADDLs
  9. addn
  10. addn.
  11. addnl

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: addlings (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “addlings.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/addlings. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.