dudgeon
/ˈdʌd͡ʒən/
dudgeon noun: a feeling of anger or resentment, especially haughty indignation.
Noun (1)
dudgeon (uncountable)
- A feeling of anger or resentment, especially haughty indignation.
- All gentle folks who owe a grudge / To any living thing, / Open your ears and stay your trudge / Whilst I in dudgeon sing.1818, John Keats, “The Gadfly”, in Letter to Tom Keats
- To crown his discontent, his approach was utterly unnoticed by that capricious damsel. He dashed away in dudgeon from the house at an early hour, certainly less regretted by the maid than by the master of the inn.1835, William Gilmore Simms, The Partisan, Harper, Chapter XVIII, page 224
Noun (2)
dudgeon (plural dudgeons)
- A kind of wood used especially in the handles of knives; the root of the box tree.
- Turners and Cutlers, if I mistake not the matter, doe call this wood Dudgeon, wherewith they make Dudgeon hafted daggers.1597, John Gerard, Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes
- A hilt made of this wood.
- And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of bloodc. 1606 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...
- A dagger which has a dudgeon hilt.
Proper noun capitalized: Dudgeon
Dudgeon (plural Dudgeons)
- A surname.
dudgeon meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Kannada
dudgeon in Tamil
- உடைவாள் கைப்பிடி, குத்துவாள்
dudgeon in Urdu
- کرپان, ناپسندی, قرولی
dudgeon in Bengali
- তীব্র রাগ, অসন্তোষ
dudgeon in Kannada
- ಸಿಟ್ಟು, ಮುನಿಸು, ಕಿರಿಕಿರಿ
Examples of dudgeon in a sentence
- […] I have reason to know that she took its impressment into the service of boiling my egg and broiling my bacon, in dudgeon; for I saw her, with my own discomfited eyes, shake her fist at me once […]1849 May – 1850 November, Charles Dickens, “I am Sent Away from Home”, in The Personal History of David Copperfield, London: Bradbury &...
- Will that satisfy you? [He turns on his heel and is about to go in extreme dudgeon].1912 (date written), [George] Bernard Shaw, “Pygmalion”, in Androcles and the Lion, Overruled, Pygmalion, London: Constable and Company...
- If they think you're talking out of turn, dudgeon ensues, and dudgeon might easily lead her to reach for the ginger ale bottle and bean me with it.1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter XI, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC:
- In her typical appearances on Fox News, Jeanine Pirro, a former Republican district attorney, reserves her highest dudgeon for castigating liberals and lamenting the demise of law and order.2020 May 30, Michael M. Grynbaum, Annie Karni, Jeremy W. Peters, “What Top Conservatives Are Saying About George Floyd and Police...
Forms of dudgeon
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | dudgeons |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Dudgeons |
Origin of dudgeon
Uncertain: * Perhaps the same as Etymology 2, below * Perhaps from Welsh dygen (“anger, grudge”) (from dy- + cwyn (“complaint”)), though the OED rejects this. * Possibly from dudgen (“trash, something worthless”). * Possibly borrowed from Italian aduggiare (“to overshadow”), similar to the semantic development of umbrage.
From Middle English dogeon, apparently from Anglo-Norman or Middle French, but the ultimate origin is obscure. Compare French douve (“stave”).
English and Scottish surname, perhaps related to the noun dudgeon (sense 1) (“kind of wood used in a hilt”). Or, from a diminutive of Dodge.
Words formed from dudgeon
Words that rhyme with dudgeon
Questions about dudgeon
- What does dudgeon mean?
- Dudgeon means a feeling of anger or resentment, especially haughty indignation.
- What is dudgeon in Tamil?
- Dudgeon in Tamil is உடைவாள் கைப்பிடி, குத்துவாள். See Dudgeon meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use dudgeon in a sentence?
- […] I have reason to know that she took its impressment into the service of boiling my egg and broiling my bacon, in dudgeon; for I saw her, with my own discomfited eyes, shake her fist at me once […]
- What part of speech is dudgeon?
- Dudgeon can be a noun or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce dudgeon?
- Dudgeon is pronounced /ˈdʌd͡ʒən/.
- What is the plural of dudgeon?
- The plural of dudgeon is dudgeons.
Words near dudgeon in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: dudgeon (page history and authors); Dudgeon (page history and authors); dudgeon (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); dudgeon (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); Dudgeon (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); dudgeon (Kannada Wiktionary) (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-dudgeon.wav.
Cite this entry: “dudgeon.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dudgeon. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.