Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A stupid fellow; a dolt; a numskull.

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

  • noun A blockhead; a dolt.

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

  • noun A blockhead; a dolt or fool.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

clod +‎ pate

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Examples

  • In the middle of July the devil came to the place aforesaid with all his crew at his heels, a whole choir of the younger fry of hell; and having met the farmer, said to him, Well, clodpate, how hast thou done since I went?

    Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002

  • In the middle of July the devil came to the place aforesaid with all his crew at his heels, a whole choir of the younger fry of hell; and having met the farmer, said to him, Well, clodpate, how hast thou done since I went?

    Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002

  • Look at Arria worshipping the drunken clodpate of a husband who beats her; look at Cornelia treasuring as a jewel in her maternal heart the oaf her son; I have known a woman preach Jesuit's bark, and afterwards Dr. Berkeley's tar-water, as though to swallow them were a divine decree, and to refuse them no better than blasphemy.

    The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. A Colonel in the Service of Her Majesty Queen Anne William Makepeace Thackeray 1837

  • The devil, you must know, came to the poor man's door, and rapping there, cried, So ho! ho, the house! ho, clodpate! where art thou?

    Gargantua and Pantagruel, Illustrated, Book 4 Fran��ois Rabelais 1518

  • In the middle of July the devil came to the place aforesaid with all his crew at his heels, a whole choir of the younger fry of hell; and having met the farmer, said to him, Well, clodpate, how hast thou done since I went?

    Gargantua and Pantagruel, Illustrated, Book 4 Fran��ois Rabelais 1518

  • Also, a great nation having made up its mind that hanging is quite the wholesomest process for its homicides in general, can yet with mercy distinguish between the degrees of guilt in homicides; and does not yelp like a pack of frost-pinched wolf-cubs on the blood-track of an unhappy crazed boy, or gray-haired clodpate Othello, "perplexed i 'the extreme," at the very moment that it is sending a Minister of the Crown to make polite speeches to a man who is bayoneting young girls in their father's sight, and killing noble youths in cool blood, faster than a country butcher kills lambs in spring.

    Harvard Classics Volume 28 Essays English and American Various

  • Also, a great nation, having made up its mind that hanging is quite the wholesomest process for its homicides in general, can yet with mercy distinguish between the degrees of guilt in homicides; and does not yelp like a pack of frost-pinched wolf-cubs on the blood-track of an unhappy crazed boy, or gray-haired clodpate Othello, “perplexed i’ the extreme, ” at the very moment that it is sending a Minister of the Crown to make polite speeches to a man who is bayoneting young girls in their father’s sight, and killing noble youths in cool blood, faster than a country butcher kills lambs in spring.

    Sesame and Lilies. Lecture I.-Sesame: Of Kings’ Treasuries 1909

  • The devil, you must know, came to the poor man’s door, and rapping there, cried, So ho! ho, the house! ho, clodpate! where art thou?

    Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002

  • The devil, you must know, came to the poor man’s door, and rapping there, cried, So ho! ho, the house! ho, clodpate! where art thou?

    Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002

  • Look at Arria worshipping the drunken clodpate of a husband who beats her; look at Cornelia treasuring as a jewel in her maternal heart the oaf her son; I have known a woman preach Jesuit’s bark, and afterwards Dr. Berkeley’s tar-water, as though to swallow them were a divine decree, and to refuse them no better than blasphemy.

    The History of Henry Esmond 1852

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