Puddle

The weather this last week has been rather wet, leaving many puddles all around campus. Puddle is an odd word to describe a sizable pool of water, and this thought alone led me to trace its origins.

The OED defines a puddle as "a small, shallow, typically temporary pool formed in a depression on the ground or another surface by rainfall, flooding, overflow, etc." The OED also uses puddle to describe any pool of liquid, and also humourously to decribe any body of water seen as insignificant.

The AED holds a similar definition of puddle, followed by a fairly uncommon usage: "a tempered paste of wet clay and sand that serves as waterproofing when dry."

Etymologically, puddle comes from the Middle English word podel, which is a diminuitive of the Old English word pudd, which means "ditch".