[Known in sense 1 from 15th c.; app. the same word as mod. EFris. (= LG. dial.) todde ‘bundle, pack, small load (of hay, straw, turf, etc.)’: see Doornkaat-Koolman; also in dial. (Groningen, Guelderland, Overyssel) tod load. With this cf. Sw. dial. todd ‘a conglomerated mass, esp. of wool’ (Biörkman). Answering in form also (though not very satisfactory in sense) is MHG., Ger. zotte ‘tuft of hair, matted or shaggy hair,’ also ‘rag,’ mod.Du. tod, todde ‘rag.’ (The ON. toddi does not mean ‘tod of wool’ as erroneously stated in Vigf., but only ‘bit, piece.’
An original sense of ‘conglomerated mass,’ passing on the one hand into ‘load,’ and on the other into ‘bushy mass, bush,’ would perhaps suit the various senses. Sense 1 may have come to England in connection with the wool trade with the continent; sense 2, on the other hand, which is a century later, seems to approach the sense ‘tuft’ or ‘tufted mass.’]
I. 1. A weight used in the wool trade, usually 28 pounds or 2 stone, but varying locally.
1425. in Kennett, Par. Antiq. (1818), II. 250. De xxiii todde lanæ puræ … per le todde ix sol. vi den.
1467. in Eng. Gilds (1870), 384. Custom for euery todd j d.
1542. Recorde, Gr. Artes (1575), 203. In woolle, 28 pounde is not called a quarterne, but a Todde.
1696. Phil. Trans., XIX. 343. Three or four Fleeces usually making a Tod of Twenty eight Pound.
1776. Adam Smith, W. N., I. xi. (1869), I. 242. One-and-twenty shillings the tod may be reckoned a good price for very good English wool.
1833. Wauldy Farm Rep., 115, in Libr. Usef. Knowl., Husb., III. The agreement is made by the tod, which the dealers have contrived to enlarge to 281/2 lbs.
1888. Daily News, 23 July, 2/7. The finest growths of home-grown produce … changing hands at from 23s to 25s per tod.
b. A load, either generally, or of a definite weight.
1530. Palsgr., 281/2. Tode of chese.
1621. Fletcher, Pilgrim, III. iv. A hundred crowns for a good Tod of Hay.
17[?]. Songs Costume (Percy Soc.), 248. There’s the ladies of fashion you see … With a great tod of wool on each hip.
a. 1722. Lisle, Husb. (1757), 311. [They] allow three tod and an half of hay to the wintering of one sheep.
1863. W. Barnes, Poems, 3rd Coll. 73. Zoo all the lot o’ stuff a-tied Upon the plow, a tidy tod.
1887. Rogers, Agric. & Prices, V. 302. Prices of hay and straw…. The cwt. and its subdivision, the tod, are the commonest of these exceptional measures.
1889. Devon farmer (E.D.D. s.v. Tad), I’ve a-got a middlin’ tad [load of hay] here, sure ’nough.
fig. 1648. Herrick, Hesper., Conjuration to Electra. By those soft tods of wooll [clouds] with which the aire is full.
II. 2. A bushy mass (esp. of ivy; more fully IVY-TOD, q.v.).
1553. Becon, Reliques of Rome (1563), 53 b. Our recluses haue grates of yron in their spelunckes and dennes, out of the which they looke, as owles out of an yuye todde.
1592. Warner, Alb. Eng., VII. xxxvii. (1612), 183. Your Ladiship, Dame Owle, Did call me to your Todd.
a. 1619. Fletcher, Bonduca, i. Men of Britain Like boading Owls, creep into tods of Ivie.
1626. Bacon, Sylva, § 588. Some [trees] are more in the forme of a Pyramis, and come almost to todd; As the Peare-Tree.
1709. Brit. Apollo, II. No. 73. 3/1. What Tod of Ivy hath so long conceal’d Thy Corps?
1908. Outlook, 4 Jan., 4/2. Ivy tods were covered with pollen in Christmas week and the smaller gorse is flowering freely.
III. 3. attrib. or Comb. † Tod-wool, clean wool made up into tods.
1636. Minute Bk. Exeter City Chamber, 5 April (MS.). The weighing and sale of all toddwooll, rudge-washt wooll, and fleecewooll, and unwashed wooll.
