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tod, n.2

SECOND EDITION 1989

(td)  [Known in sense 1 from 15th c.; app. the same word as mod.EFris. (= LG. dial.) todde ‘bundle, pack, small load (of hay, straw, turf, etc.)’: see Doornkaat-Koolman; also in dial. (Groningen, Guelderland, Overyssel) tod load. With this cf. Sw. dial. todd ‘a conglomerated mass, esp. of wool’ (Biörkman). Answering in form also (though not very satisfactory in sense) is MHG., Ger. zotte ‘tuft of hair, matted or shaggy hair’, also ‘rag’, mod.Du. tod, todde ‘rag’. (The ON. toddi does not mean ‘tod of wool’ as erroneously stated in Vigf., but only ‘bit, piece’.
  An original sense of ‘conglomerated mass’, passing on the one hand into ‘load’, and on the other into ‘bushy mass, bush’, would perhaps suit the various senses. Sense 1 may have come to England in connexion with the wool trade with the continent; sense 2, on the other hand, which is a century later, seems to approach the sense ‘tuft’ or ‘tufted mass’.] 

    I. 1. A weight used in the wool trade, usually 28 pounds or 2 stone, but varying locally.

1425 in Kennett Par. Antiq. (1818) II. 250 De xxiii todde lanæ puræ..per le todde ix sol. vi den. 1467 in Eng. Gilds (1870) 384 Custom for euery todd jd. 1542 RECORDE Gr. Artes (1575) 203 In woolle, 28 pounde is not called a quarterne, but a Todde. 1696 Phil. Trans. XIX. 343 Three or four Fleeces usually making a Tod of Twenty eight Pound. 1776 ADAM SMITH W.N. I. xi. (1869) I. 242 One-and-twenty shillings the tod may be reckoned a good price for very good English wool. 1833 Wauldy Farm Rep. 115 in Libr. Usef. Knowl., Husb. III, The agreement is made by the tod, which the dealers have contrived to enlarge to 28 lbs. 1888 Daily News 23 July 2/7 The finest growths of home-grown produce..changing hands at from 23s to 25s per tod.

    b. A load, either generally, or of a definite weight.

1530 PALSGR. 281/2 Tode of chese. 1621 FLETCHER Pilgrim III. iv, A hundred crowns for a good Tod of Hay. 17.. Songs Costume (Percy Soc.) 248 There's the ladies of fashion you see..With a great tod of wool on each hip. a1722 LISLE Husb. (1757) 311 [They] allow three tod and an half of hay to the wintering of one sheep. 1863 W. BARNES Poems 3rd Coll. 73 Zoo all the lot o' stuff a-tied Upon the plow, a tidy tod. 1887 ROGERS Agric. & Prices V. 302 Prices of hay and straw... The cwt. and its subdivision, the tod, are the commonest of these exceptional measures. 1889 Devon farmer (E.D.D. s.v. Tad), I've a-got a middlin' tad [load of hay] here, sure 'nough.

fig. 1648 HERRICK Hesper., Conjuration to Electra, By those soft tods of wooll [clouds] With which the aire is full.

    II. 2. A bushy mass (esp. of ivy; more fully IVY-TOD, q.v.).

1553 BECON Reliques of Rome (1563) 53b, Our recluses haue grates of yron in their spelunckes and dennes, out of the which they looke, as owles out of an yuye todde. 1592 WARNER Alb. Eng. VII. xxxvii. (1612) 183 Your Ladiship, Dame Owle, Did call me to your Todd. a1619 FLETCHER Bonduca I. i, Men of Britain Like boading Owls, creep into tods of Ivie. 1626 BACON Sylva §588 Some [trees] are more in the forme of a Pyramis, and come almost to todd; As the Peare-Tree. 1709 Brit. Apollo II. No. 73. 3/1 What Tod of Ivy hath so long conceal'd Thy Corps? 1908 Outlook 4 Jan. 4/2 Ivy tods were covered with pollen in Christmas week and the smaller gorse is flowering freely.

    III. 3. attrib. or Comb. tod-wool, clean wool made up into tods.

1636 Minute Bk. Exeter City Chamber 5 Apr. (MS.), The weighing and sale of all toddwooll, rudge-washt wooll, and fleecewooll, and unwashed wooll.

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