Word.ws English Dictionary

doddered

doddered adjective: of a tree, usually an oak: having lost the top or branches, especially through age and decay. Also the simple past and past participle of dodder.

Adjective

doddered (not comparable)

  1. Of a tree, usually an oak: having lost the top or branches, especially through age and decay.
    • Your Country Friends were told another Tale; / That from the ſloaping Mountain to the Vale, / And dodder’d Oak, and all the Banks along, / Menalcas ſav’d his Fortune with a Song.1697, Virgil, translated by John Dryden, The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, page 41, lines 11–14
    • This, once reſolv’d, the Peaſants were enjoin’d Sere Wood, and Firs, and dodder’d Oaks to find.1700, [John] Dryden, “Palamon and Arcite: Or, The Knight’s Tale. In Three Books.”, in Fables Ancient and Modern; […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, book III, page 82

Also used as

doddered is also the simple past and past participle of dodder.

Examples of doddered in a sentence

  • […] / He passes now the doddered oak, / Ye heard the startled raven croak; […]1813, Walter Scott, “Canto Sixth”, in Rokeby; a Poem, Edinburgh: […] [F]or John Ballantyne and Co. […]; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme...
  • The turf was verdant, the gravelled walks were white; sun-bright nasturtiums clustered beautiful about the roots of the doddered orchard giants.1853 January, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], “The Casket”, in Villette. […], volume I, London: Smith, Elder & Co., […], →OCLC...
  • From that hill-top could be seen the valley of the river Erewash, with its rich meadows and doddered willows by the water-courses, its grey uplands and scanty timber: […][1878], Frederick S[meeton] Williams, “A village inn.—The Erewash Valley.—[…]” (chapter I), in The Midland Railway: Its Rise and Progress....
  • The green glades in the autumnal woods were inviting, and sometimes they stood before the vast form of some doddered oak.1880, [Benjamin Disraeli], chapter XXXIV, in Endymion […], volume I, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →OCLC, pages 313–314:

Origin of doddered

From dodder + -ed.

Questions about doddered

What does doddered mean?
Doddered means of a tree, usually an oak: having lost the top or branches, especially through age and decay.
How do you use doddered in a sentence?
[…] / He passes now the doddered oak, / Ye heard the startled raven croak; […]
What part of speech is doddered?
Doddered is an adjective.

Words near doddered in the dictionary

  1. doddards
  2. doddart
  3. doddarts
  4. dodded
  5. dodder
  6. doddered
  7. dodderer
  8. dodderers
  9. Dodderhill
  10. dodderier
  11. dodderiest

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: doddered (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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