PLODDING

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does plodding mean? 

• PLODDING (noun)
  The noun PLODDING has 2 senses:

1. hard monotonous routine work

2. the act of walking with a slow heavy gait

  Familiarity information: PLODDING used as a noun is rare.

• PLODDING (adjective)
  The adjective PLODDING has 1 sense:

1. (of movement) slow and laborious

  Familiarity information: PLODDING used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PLODDING (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Hard monotonous routine work

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

donkeywork; drudgery; grind; plodding

Hypernyms ("plodding" is a kind of...):

labor; labour; toil (productive work (especially physical work done for wages))

Sense 2

Meaning:

The act of walking with a slow heavy gait

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

plod; plodding

Context example:

I could recognize his plod anywhere

Hypernyms ("plodding" is a kind of...):

walk; walking (the act of traveling by foot)

Derivation:

plod (walk heavily and firmly, as when weary, or through mud)

• PLODDING (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

(of movement) slow and laborious

Synonyms:

leaden; plodding

Context example:

leaden steps

Similar:

effortful (requiring great physical effort)

 Context examples 

For I am a plodding kind of fellow, Copperfield, and had learnt the way of doing such things pithily.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Alleyne was plodding down the slope upon one side, when he saw an old dame coming towards him upon the other, limping with weariness and leaning heavily upon a stick.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Yet he never turned his head, plodding straight onward, slowly and methodically, as though possessed of no interest in what was occurring behind his back.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

I was plodding up the slope, turning these thoughts over in my mind, and had reached a point which may have been half-way to home, when my mind was brought back to my own position by a strange noise behind me.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

"I beg your pardon. I didn't see the name distinctly. Never mind, I can walk. I'm used to plodding in the mud," returned Jo, winking hard, because she would have died rather than openly wipe her eyes.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

He continued his plodding pursuit, though once, for the moment baffled, he came to a full stop and blinked at the men who looked on, at the same time wagging his stump of a tail as an expression of his willingness to fight.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

Of course it's all valueless, just so much dull and sordid plodding; but it is no more dull and sordid than keeping books at sixty dollars a month, adding up endless columns of meaningless figures until one dies.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

In truth it was humble—but then it was sheltered, and I wanted a safe asylum: it was plodding—but then, compared with that of a governess in a rich house, it was independent; and the fear of servitude with strangers entered my soul like iron: it was not ignoble—not unworthy—not mentally degrading, I made my decision.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Strings of pedestrians, most of them so weary and dust-covered that it was evident that they had walked the thirty miles from London during the night, were plodding along by the sides of the road or trailing over the long mottled slopes of the moorland.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow—a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tarry pigtail falling over the shoulder of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)