pollywog
pollywog noun: a tadpole.
Noun
pollywog (plural pollywogs)
- A tadpole.
- So Tommy sang the following verse: “The cold got worse, The frog got hoarse, Till croaking he scared a polliwog!”1897, L. Frank Baum, “The Story of Tommy Tucker”, in Mother Goose in Prose
- A sailor who has not yet crossed the equator.
- An untrustworthy person, especially a politician.
Verb
pollywog (third-person singular simple present pollywogs, present participle pollywogging, simple past and past participle pollywogged)
- To collect mussels, clams, etc. in shallow water using one's hands.
- She was a ninety-year-old Irish lady, and knew more about the river than anyone I’d met. She knew every tow ever to pass by her house, and told me stories of pollywogging when she was a girl. When she wasn’t hunting clams, she was fishing cats, and knew every beach, island and milemarker on the...2001, Matthew Mohlke, “Quad Cities” (chapter 7), in Floating Down the Country, Red Wing, Minn.: Lone Oak Press, Ltd., →ISBN, page 91
- I grew up on the Mississippi River and as a youth I fished, camped, and pollywogged for clams on the river, but I never found a pearl.2003 May, Linda Landrigan, quoting Joe Helgerson, “Editor’s Notes”, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, volume 48, number 5, →ISSN, page 5
- To move in the manner of a tadpole; to zigzag, undulate.
- Crossing the goal line, [Billy "White Shoes"] Johnson was automatically transformed in to a kind of dancing cartoon: legs pollywogging back and forth like plastic limbs, knees—at least before some injuries—seemingly flexing in all planes, football held aloft in one hand.1984, Phil Patton, “Off the Set” (chapter 12), in Razzle-Dazzle: The Curious Marriage Of Television And Professional Football, New York, N.Y.: The Dial Press, →ISBN, page 142
- I guess he figured I could make it back to the bank on my own. I stayed out there and kind of pollywogged up and down getting my breath. The cool water felt so good.1985, Timothy S. Lowry, And Brave Men, Too, New York, N.Y.: Berkley Books, published August 1986, →ISBN, page 190
Examples of pollywog in a sentence
- She knew every tow ever to pass by her house, and told me stories of pollywogging when she was a girl.2001, Matthew Mohlke, “Quad Cities” (chapter 7), in Floating Down the Country, Red Wing, Minn.: Lone Oak Press, Ltd., →ISBN, page 91:
- “Toe-digging” or “pollywogging” was fine if you didn’t need very many mussels.2012, Lisa Knopp, “Mississippi Harvest” (chapter 3), in What the River Carries: Encounters with the Mississippi, Missouri, and Platte...
Forms of pollywog
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | pollywogs |
| alternative form | polliwog |
| alternative form | porwiggle |
| alternative form | porwigle |
| alternative form (obsolete) | poliwag |
| alternative form (obsolete) | polliwag |
| alternative form (obsolete) | polliwig |
| alternative form (obsolete) | polliwiggle |
| alternative form (obsolete) | pollywig |
| alternative form (obsolete) | polwig |
| alternative form (obsolete) | purwiggy |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | pollywogs |
| present participle | pollywogging |
| past participle | pollywogged |
| past | pollywogged |
Origin of pollywog
From earlier polwigge, from Middle English polwygle, equal to poll (“head”) + wiggle.
Questions about pollywog
- What does pollywog mean?
- Pollywog means a tadpole.
- How do you use pollywog in a sentence?
- She knew every tow ever to pass by her house, and told me stories of pollywogging when she was a girl.
- What part of speech is pollywog?
- Pollywog can be a noun or a verb.
- What is the plural of pollywog?
- The plural of pollywog is pollywogs.
Words near pollywog in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: pollywog (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-polliwog.wav, En-au-pollywog.ogg.
Cite this entry: “pollywog.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pollywog. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.