puddle

/ˈpʌdəl/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Midlands/ˈpʊdəl/

puddle noun: a small, often temporary, pool of water, usually on a path or road.

Image: Ildar Sagdejev ( Specious ), CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

puddle (plural puddles)

A small, often temporary, pool of water, usually on a path or road.
- Foꝛ with the only be theſe welles of lyfe, / Of frayle men ſpring but podels of myꝛe, / From whom ſourdeth errour ⁊ croked ſtrife[…]1560, “Pſalme. xxxvi”, in Matthew Parker, The whole Pſalter tranſlated into Engliſh metre […] , Iohn Daye, page 98
(dialectal) Stagnant or polluted water.
- And fast beside a little brooke did pas / Of muddie water, that like puddle stank […].1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto V”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
- searching their habitations for water, we could fill but three barricoes, and that such puddle, that never till then we ever knew the want of good water.1624, John Smith, Generall Historie, Kupperman, published 1988, page 90
A homogeneous mixture of clay, water, and sometimes grit, used to line a canal or pond to make it watertight.
The ripple left by the withdrawal of an oar from the water.
- I had only to see the 'puddle' to know that your paddle made it.1969, Charles Cuthbert Brown, Malay Sayings, page 88
- As the blade exits the water the puddle is very tight and dark. It is also very quiet.2007, Rowing News, volume 14, number 5, page 36

Verb

puddle (third-person singular simple present puddles, present participle puddling, simple past and past participle puddled)

To form a puddle.
To play or splash in a puddle.
Of butterflies, to congregate on a puddle or moist substance to pick up nutrients.
To process iron, gold, etc., by means of puddling.
To line a canal with puddle (clay).
To collect ideas, especially abstract concepts, into rough subtopics or categories, as in study, research or conversation.
To make (clay, loam, etc.) dense or close, by working it when wet, so as to render impervious to water.
- Soon the Latino warrior had bared his beefy body. His bullet packed bandolier still draped over one shoulder served to emphasize the nakedness of the torso, as did the boots and the pants that were puddled about his ankles.1991, Etienne, “In Enemy Hands”, in Drummer, number 151, page 32
To make foul or muddy; to pollute with dirt; to mix dirt with (water).
- Some unhatched practice […] / Hath puddled his clear spirit.c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Othello, the Moore of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac...

puddle meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali

puddle in Hindi

a small pool of water: पोखर pokhar, डबरा ḍabrā, डाबर ḍābar

puddle in Tamil

a small pool of water: குட்டை kuṭṭai

puddle in Urdu

a small pool of water: پوکَھر pokhar, ڈَبْرا ḍabrā, ڈابَر ḍābar

puddle in Bengali

a small pool of water: খানা khana

More languagesFewer languages

puddle in Malayalam: ചെളിക്കുണ്ട്, കലക്കവെള്ളം, ചവുട്ടിക്കുഴച്ച മണ്ണ്
puddle in Kannada: ಕೊಚ್ಚೆಗುಂಡಿ, ಕೆಸರುಗುಂಡಿ, ಹಳ್ಳ, ಕೊಳಕು ನೀರಿನ ಹಳ್ಳ
puddle in Gujarati: ખાબોચિયું khābociyũ
puddle in Tagalog: sanaw
puddle in Arabic: غَدِير ḡadīr, بِرْكَة birka
puddle in Malay: lopak
puddle in Indonesian: genangan air
puddle in Thai: ตะพัง dtà-pang, แอ่ง ɛ̀ng
puddle in Vietnamese: vũng, hũm
puddle in Myanmar: ရွှံ့ပွက် hrwam.pwak, အိုင် uing

Examples of puddle in a sentence

I felt a splash of water on my leg as the car drove into the nearby puddle.
My car started acting up after I drove through that huge puddle.
He fell in a puddle and ended up covered head to toe in mud.

All 40 example sentences with puddle

Forms of puddle

Noun
plural	puddles
Verb
third-person singular present	puddles
present participle	puddling
past participle	puddled
past	puddled

Plural of puddle: puddles

Origin of puddle

From Middle English podel, diminutive of Old English pudd (“ditch”), from Proto-Germanic *puddaz (compare Low German Pudel (“puddle”), Middle High German podel (“quagmire, mudhole”), Hunsrik Puttel, dialectal German Pfudel (“puddle”), German pudeln (“to splash about”)), ultimately imitative.

Words formed from puddle

Phrases with puddle

Words that rhyme with puddle

Questions about puddle

What does puddle mean?: Puddle means a small, often temporary, pool of water, usually on a path or road.
What is puddle in Hindi?: Puddle in Hindi is पोखर (pokhar), डबरा (ḍabrā), डाबर (ḍābar). See Puddle meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is puddle?: Puddle can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce puddle?: Puddle is pronounced /ˈpʌdəl/ (UK).
What is the plural of puddle?: The plural of puddle is puddles.

Words near puddle in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: puddle (page history and authors); puddle (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); puddle (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ખાબોચિયું (Gujarati) (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: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-puddle.wav.

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