Definitions

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

  • noun A group of marine mammals, such as whales, or of certain other animals, such as hippopotamuses.
  • noun The lengthwise groove in certain boring tools such as augers.
  • noun The socket for holding the bit in a boring tool.
  • noun A dehiscent fruit of a leguminous plant such as the pea, splitting along two sides.
  • noun A dry, several-seeded, dehiscent fruit.
  • noun Zoology An egg case of certain insects, especially a locust or other orthopteran.
  • noun Geology An deposit of rock or sediment that is much longer than it is wide.
  • noun A casing or housing forming part of a vehicle, as.
  • noun A streamlined external housing that encloses engines, machine guns, or fuel.
  • noun A detachable compartment on a spacecraft for carrying personnel or instrumentation.
  • noun Something resembling a pod, as in compactness.
  • intransitive verb To bear or produce pods.
  • intransitive verb To expand or swell like a pod.
  • intransitive verb To remove (seeds) from a pod.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To swell and assume the appearance of a pod.
  • To produce pods.
  • To drive seals or walruses into a pod or bunch for the purpose of clubbing them.
  • To assemble in small bands: specifically applied to the pups, or young, of the fur-seal.
  • noun In botany, a more or less elongated cylindrical or flatfish seed-vessel, as of the pea, bean, catalpa, etc.; technically, a legume or silicle, but applied commonly to any dry dehiscent (mostly)sever-al-seeded pericarp, whether of one carpel (follicle, leg ume)or of several (capsule). See cuts under Arachis, balloon-vine, circumscissile, Crueiferæ, divi-divi, and Eriodendron.
  • noun The straight channel or groove in the body of certain forms of augers and boring-bits.
  • noun The pike when nearly full-grown.
  • noun A school or shoal, as of fishes or whales; a group or number, as of seals or walruses.
  • noun . The blade of a cricket-bat.

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

  • noun Obs. or Prov. Eng. A bag; a pouch.
  • noun (Bot.) A capsule of plant, especially a legume; a dry dehiscent fruit. See Illust. of Angiospermous.
  • noun (Zoöl.) A considerable number of animals closely clustered together; -- said of seals.
  • noun an auger or bit the channel of which is straight instead of twisted.
  • intransitive verb To swell; to fill; also, to produce pods.

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

  • noun A group of whales, dolphins, porpoises or hippopotami.
  • noun botany a seed case for legumes (e.g. peas, beans, peppers)
  • noun a small vehicle, especially used in emergency situations
  • verb intransitive To bear or produce pods
  • verb transitive To remove peas from their case.
  • verb intransitive To swell or fill.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb produce pods, of plants
  • noun a several-seeded dehiscent fruit as e.g. of a leguminous plant
  • noun a detachable container of fuel on an airplane
  • verb take something out of its shell or pod
  • noun the vessel that contains the seeds of a plant (not the seeds themselves)
  • noun a group of aquatic mammals

Etymologies

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

[Origin unknown.]

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

[Origin unknown.]

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

[Origin unknown.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From a special use of Etymology 1. See above.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English *pod ("seed-pod, husk, shell"), from Old English pād ("an outer garment, covering, coat, cloak"), from Proto-Germanic *paidō (“coat, smock, shirt”), from Proto-Indo-European *baitā- (“woolen clothes”). Cognate with Old Saxon pēda ("skirt"), German dialectal Pfeid, Pfeit ("shirt"), Gothic  (paida, "mantle, skirt"), Ancient Greek  (báitā, "goat-skin, fur-coat or tent").

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Examples

Comments

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  • Holy propaganda, Rummy man! I want a pods are there t-shirt!

    January 25, 2008

  • I suspect you won't have to wait long. ;-)

    January 25, 2008

  • A style of open-plan office. Following on from the cube farm (and in no way an improvement on it), the pod features low partitions (accidental eye-contact with neighbours becomes possible and effectiveness as a noise barrier is reduced to a minimum), no privacy and next to no storage space. Bookshelves are a luxury accorded only to those whose portion of the pod happens to abut a supporting wall.

    Etymology: viewed from above, workers bear a striking resemblance to peas in a pod.

    April 6, 2008

  • pod, n.

    Steve Raikow, 29 November 2015:

    New tech jargon spotted in the wild: Pod, noun, a podcast episode. Ex: "Today's pod is brought to you by squarespace." #jargonwatch #ugh

    December 28, 2015

  • pod, n. A podcast

    The Guardian, 21 December 2016:

    The daddy of British podcasting is beloved for good reason. His pod is laced with the same creativity and nerdy attention to detail as everything he has ever done.

    January 5, 2017