Word.ws English Dictionary

ruddy

UK/ˈɹʌdi/

ruddy adjective: reddish in color, especially of the face, fire, or sky.

Adjective

ruddy (comparative ruddier, superlative ruddiest)

  1. Reddish in color, especially of the face, fire, or sky.
    • Drystone walls, farm buildings and stone cottages, roofed with ruddy tiles, line the way and blend gently into the surrounding countryside.1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, →ISBN, page 143
    • A silvery cloud drifted over the mountains that surrounded him, its edges glowing with ruddy light cast from the harvest moon cradled between two peaks.2003, Christopher Paolini, “Discovery”, in Eragon, page 6
    Synonyms:
    rosy
  2. Robust and vigorous, like a person with a red complexion (as compared to a pale one).
    • in ruddy health
  3. (Australia, UK, not comparable, slang) A mild intensifier, expressing irritation.
    • "Sister?" I inquired. "She ain't 'ere," a man's voice said. "What's more," it went on, "she ain't been 'ere for ruddy hours, neither. Can't you pull them ruddy curtains, mate, and let's 'ave some flippin' light?"1951, John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, published 1954, page 19
    • “Of all the damn silly fatheaded things!” she vociferated, if that's the word. “With a million ruddy names to choose from, these ruddy Creams call one ruddy son Wilbert and the other ruddy son Wilfred, and both these ruddy sons are known as Willie. Just going out of their way to mislead the...1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, “XVIII AND XX”, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC

Adverb

ruddy (not comparable)

  1. (UK, slang) A mild intensifier, expressing irritation.
    • “So, you made quite a splash on Question Time, my homeless pal,” he continued. “Ruddy hilarious. Ha ha ha!”2009 October 29, David Walliams [pseudonym; David Edward Williams], Mr Stink, London: HarperCollins Children’s Books, →ISBN
    • 'You're not ruddy going anywhere,' he said, slamming the door behind him.2017, June Francis, When the Clouds Go Rolling By

Noun

ruddy (plural ruddies)

  1. (informal) A ruddy duck.
    • In winter, snow geese land at West Pond, a Robert Moses legacy that ought to be called Duck Soup: at this time of year look for ruddies, greater scaups, Northern pintails, American widgeons and gadwalls.2007 November 4, Deborah Baldwin, “Close to Nature, and the Airport”, in New York Times
  2. (informal) A ruddy ground dove.
    • Ground doves — two ruddies are shown here — are so called because they feed on the ground.1987, Jürgen Nicolai, A Complete Introduction to Finches, Tfh Publications Incorporated, →ISBN, page 89
    • Understandably, birders in the U.S. are advised to carefully distinguish Ruddies from the usually more-expected Common Ground-Doves [...]. (Brightly-colored, pinkish adult male Common Ground-Doves have been misidentified as male Ruddies on several occasions, however.) Unless the fortunate birder...1994, Birding, page 298

Verb

ruddy (third-person singular simple present ruddies, present participle ruddying, simple past and past participle ruddied)

  1. (transitive) To make reddish in colour.
    • The sunset ruddied our faces.
    • It ruddied all the copse-wood glen1805, Walter Scott, “(please specify the page)”, in The Lay of the Last Minstrel: A Poem, London: […] [James Ballantyne] for Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, […], and A[rchibald] Constable and Co....

Proper noun capitalized: Ruddy

Ruddy

  1. A surname.

ruddy meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Telugu

ruddy in Hindi

reddish
रक्ताभ raktābh, लोहित lohit

ruddy in Tamil

சிவந்த

ruddy in Urdu

لال, سرخ مائل

ruddy in Telugu

ruddy, tawny, red, iron grey, like the colour of the ichneumon
బభ్రువు babhruvu
More languagesFewer languages
ruddy in Malayalam
ചുവന്ന, ചുവന്നനിറമുള്ള, രോഹ, ലക്ത
ruddy in Kannada
ಮಯ್ಯೊಳಿತುಳ್ಳ, ಕೆಂಪು ಬಣ್ಣದ
ruddy in Punjabi
ਲਾਲ lāl
ruddy in Sanskrit
ब्रध्न bradhná

Examples of ruddy in a sentence

  • Frank, who is narrow and ruddy, and who tended to wear a shirt and tie with a cherry-red beanie pulled low over one ear, swapped his white butcher’s coat for a puffer jacket, and led me outside2020 September 1, Tom Lamont, “The butcher's shop that lasted 300 years (give or take)”, in The Guardian:
  • “With a million ruddy names to choose from, these ruddy Creams call one ruddy son Wilbert and the other ruddy son Wilfred, and both these ruddy sons are known as Willie.1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, “XVIII AND XX”, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC:
  • If, at the end of it, you’ve toed the line and kept to the story, I’ll sign your ruddy form.1999, J. K. Rowling, chapter 2, in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Bloomsbury:
  • Out-of-state birders seeking Ruddy Ground Doves should be aware of two things.2008, Jim Burns, Jim Burns' Arizona Birds: From the Backyard to the Backwoods, University of Arizona Press, →ISBN, page 28:

All 27 example sentences with ruddy

Synonyms of ruddy

All synonyms of ruddy

Forms of ruddy

Adjective
comparativeruddier
superlativeruddiest
Noun
pluralruddies
Verb
third-person singular presentruddies
present participleruddying
past participleruddied
pastruddied

Origin of ruddy

Inherited from Middle English rody, from Old English rudiġ (“reddish; ruddy”), from rudu + -iġ. By surface analysis, rud (“redness”) + -y. Compare Icelandic roði (“redness”). The British slang sense expressing irritation is presumably a euphemism for bloody.

Words formed from ruddy

Phrases with ruddy

Words that rhyme with ruddy

Questions about ruddy

What does ruddy mean?
Ruddy means reddish in color, especially of the face, fire, or sky.
What is ruddy in Hindi?
Ruddy in Hindi is रक्ताभ (raktābh), लोहित (lohit). See Ruddy meaning in Hindi.
How do you use ruddy in a sentence?
Frank, who is narrow and ruddy, and who tended to wear a shirt and tie with a cherry-red beanie pulled low over one ear, swapped his white butcher’s coat for a puffer jacket, and led me outside
What part of speech is ruddy?
Ruddy can be an adjective, an adverb, a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce ruddy?
Ruddy is pronounced /ˈɹʌdi/ (UK).

Words near ruddy in the dictionary

  1. ruddles
  2. ruddling
  3. ruddock
  4. ruddocks
  5. rudds
  6. ruddy
  7. ruddy diver
  8. ruddy divers
  9. ruddy duck
  10. ruddy ducks
  11. ruddy ground dove

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ruddy (page history and authors); Ruddy (page history and authors); ruddy (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ruddy (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); బభ్రువు (Telugu) (page history and authors); ruddy (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); ruddy (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ਲਾਲ (Punjabi) (page history and authors); ब्रध्न (Sanskrit) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-ruddy.ogg, en-au-ruddy.ogg.

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