[f. SOD sb.1 Cf. MDu. soden, zoden, LG. soden, söden, to make sods, lay with sods.] trans. To cover or build up, to provide or lay, with sods or turfs; to turf.
1653. Blithe, Eng. Improver Impr. (ed. 3), 55. One good substantiall Dike, well turfed (or sodded, as the Fen-men call it).
1693. Evelyn, De la Quint. Compl. Gard., I. 42. Those Terraces must be supported … by some Banks that shall be sodded on purpose, to make them the more solid and lasting.
1704. Dict. Rust. (1726), s.v. Brick, To sod, is to cover the Bricks.
1799. [A. Young], Agric. Lincoln., 159. Bind the femble into sheaves or beats. Cart it to dykes, sod it.
1839. Hood, Storm at Hastings, xxix. We snatch’d up the corse thus thrown, Intending, Christian-like, to sod and turf it.
1889. J. L. Allen, in Harper’s Mag., Sept., 558/2. The slope was sodded and terraced with rows of seats.
b. Const. down, over, up.
1763. Museum Rust., I. 368. A sorry mound of sods, with some bushes sodded down on top, to keep out sheep.
1821. Clare, Vill. Minstr., II. 81. Made up of mud and stones and sodded o’er.
1870. Daily News, 12 Nov., 5/6. The trim square earthwork, so completely constructed as to have been sodded up with turf, of a Prussian battery.
