Word.ws English Dictionary

edder

/ˈɛdɚ/

edder noun: a long flexible stick, rod or other piece of wood worked into the top of hedge stakes, to bind them together.

Noun (1)

edder (plural edders)

  1. (plural-normally) A long flexible stick, rod or other piece of wood worked into the top of hedge stakes, to bind them together.
    • […] including the making [of] a stake and edder hedge. I had a large quantity of excellent manure out of this ditch, consisting of rotten wood, leaves, &c. &c. &c. But in this experiment I found that our stake and edder hedges are little more to be depended on than the fet ones.1771, Arthur Young, A Course of Experimental Agriculture: Containing an Exact Register of All the Business Transacted During Five Years on Near Three Hundred Acres of Various Soils ... The Whole...
    • The stake-and-edder hedge prevails in this district.1796, William Marshall, Rural Economy, I, page 196

Verb

edder (third-person singular simple present edders, present participle eddering, simple past and past participle eddered)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To bind the top of, interweaving edder.
    • to edder a hedge
    • […] hedge, with live stakes and layers cut half in two, near the ground, and intertwisted among the stakes sufficiently to maintain their position without eddering the top. The sides of the hedge are cut alternately; […]1813, Thomas Batchelor, General View of the Agriculture of the County of Bedford, page 274

Noun (2)

edder (plural edders)

  1. An adder or snake.
    • winges like a bird she hase,
      Fete as an edder, a mayden's face,
      Her kinde I'll take1816, J. H. Hansall, The Stranger in Chester

Examples of edder in a sentence

  • The scouring of the ditch is thrown up, a very thin stake and edder hedge is formed, and the rest of the wood made into bavins, and sold principally to bakers, at about a guinea per hundred delivered.1802, John Lawrence, The New Farmer's Calendar; Or, Monthly Remembrancer, page 254:
  • Later they will be used for "eddering" the other side of the lane.1950, Alison Uttley, Buckinghamshire, page 5:

Forms of edder

Noun
pluraledders
alternative formyedder
alternative formether
Verb
third-person singular presentedders
present participleeddering
past participleeddered
pasteddered

Origin of edder

From Middle English *edre, *eder, from Old English eder, edor (“hedge, fence”), from Proto-Germanic *edaraz, *eduraz (“hedge, border”). Cognate with Old High German etar.

Variant of adder.

Questions about edder

What does edder mean?
Edder means a long flexible stick, rod or other piece of wood worked into the top of hedge stakes, to bind them together.
How do you use edder in a sentence?
The scouring of the ditch is thrown up, a very thin stake and edder hedge is formed, and the rest of the wood made into bavins, and sold principally to bakers, at about a guinea per hundred delivered.
What part of speech is edder?
Edder can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce edder?
Edder is pronounced /ˈɛdɚ/.
What is the plural of edder?
The plural of edder is edders.

Words near edder in the dictionary

  1. EDD
  2. edd.
  3. Edda
  4. Eddaic
  5. Eddas
  6. edder
  7. eddered
  8. eddering
  9. edders
  10. Edderton
  11. eddic

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: edder (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:

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