Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A warm drink consisting of wine or ale mixed with sugar, eggs, bread, and various spices, sometimes given to ill persons.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A kind of warm drink made of wine or ale mixed with bread, sugar, and spices, and sometimes eggs, given to sick persons, to a woman in childbed, and her visitors.
  • To make into caudle.
  • To serve as a caudle for; refresh, comfort, or make warm, as with caudle.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A kind of warm drink for sick persons, being a mixture of wine with eggs, bread, sugar, and spices.
  • transitive verb To make into caudle.
  • transitive verb rare Too serve as a caudle to; to refresh.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A hot drink given to the sick, consisting of wine or ale, eggs, and bread.
  • verb transitive To make into caudle.
  • verb transitive To serve as a caudle to; to refresh.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English caudel, from Old North French, from Medieval Latin caldellus, from Latin caldum, hot drink, from caldus, calidus, warm, hot; see kelə- in Indo-European roots.]

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Examples

  • And when he would have cuddled and kissed her, and done his proper duty as a husband, and so earned his "caudle", (*) she turned herself first on one side and then on the other, so that he could not attain his purpose, at which he was greatly astonished and angry, and said to her,

    Cent nouvelles nouvelles L��on Leb��que 1896

  • What we do not want to do as a democracy is be convinced by business interests and their representatives that we should caudle companies who can only improve profits by squeezing their workforce or who threaten to raise prices whenever they are hit with regulations.

    Matthew Yglesias » Kaus’s Dilemma 2009

  • He emphatically rejected any suggestion of caudle or broth for breakfast, and snapped irritably at me when I tried to check the dressings on his hand.

    Sick Cycle Carousel 2010

  • “Why, you foolish person, is there not the woman up the village that has just brought another fool into the world, and will she not need sack and caudle, if we leave some of our wine?”

    Saint Ronan's Well 2008

  • The lady, like other comforters of the cabins of the poor, proceeded to rebuke the grumbling old woman for want of order and cleanliness — censured the food which was provided for the patient, and enquired particularly after the wine which she had left to make caudle with.

    Saint Ronan's Well 2008

  • The Id thinks we caudle PRISONERS at Gitmo by vidiot on Saturday, Dec 22, 2007 at 7: 23: 12 PM

    OpEdNews - Quicklink: Huckabee Claims "If Anything," We Treat Inmates at Gitmo "Too Nice" 2007

  • Let your caudle be white-wine, verjuice, some sack and sugar; thicken it with the yolks of eggs, and when the pye is baked, pour it in, and serve it hot.

    Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine 2006

  • And they are not going to be stopped if we caudle them.

    Think Progress » The Dixie Chicks Ad NBC Doesn’t Want You To See 2006

  • You may fail to see the lie of that layout, Suetonia,3 but the reflections which recur to me are that so long as beauty life is body love4 and so bright as Mutua of your mirror holds her candle to your caudle, lone lefthand likeless, sombring

    Finnegans Wake 2006

  • Ye shall have a hempen caudle, then, and the help of hatchet.

    The Second part of King Henry the Sixth 2004

Comments

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  • A warm drink consisting of thin gruel, mixed with wine or ale, sweetened and spiced, given chiefly to sick people, especially women in childbed; also to their visitors.

    February 12, 2008

  • "Killick stood swaying in the doorway ... he burst in with 'Which Mrs. Webber says would the old gentleman like a little thin gruel? A caudle?'"

    --Patrick O'Brian, Blue at the Mizzen, 23

    March 27, 2008

  • a liquor sometimes made of beer, oatmeal, etc; sometimes with water, oatmeal, spices and a small dash of wine, used by women in their lying~in, being both diaphoretic and balsamic, and administered with success to those who have the small~pox.

    Daniel Fenning, Royal English Dictionary, 1775

    ...from old French CHAUDEL, a kind of gruel or broth.

    James Stormonth, English Dictionary, 1884

    February 4, 2009