1 (often used in compounds) a long straight piece of wood, metal or glass
seealsoLIGHTNINGROD
2 = FISHINGROD:
fishing with rod and line
3 (also the rod) (old-fashioned) a stick that is used for hitting people as a punishment:
There used to be a saying: 'Spare the rod and spoil the child.'
4 (AmE, slang) a small gun
IDIOMS
make a rod for your own back to do sth that will cause problems for you in the future
moreatBEATv., RULEv.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for rod is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is rod a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, rod is tagged as noun.
Does rod appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — rod appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.