Other forms: rods
A rod is a long thin straight bar of wood or metal. A steel rod, curtain rod, a fishing rod.
It is also an old unit of length, five and a half yards, which survives in land measurement and in the size of allotments. Spare the rod is a proverb about beating children that no longer has defenders. In the eye, rods are the cells that see in dim light.
1nounrodA long thin straight bar.
“The curtains hang from a metal rod above the window.”
rod is a bar.
Old English rodd, of uncertain origin, probably from a Germanic root meaning a stick or club.
Middle English
rodde
English, today
rod
Built from
From Middle English rodde. From Middle English rodde, from Old English rodd or rodde (attested in dative plural roddum (“rod, pole”)), of unknown origin, but probably from Proto-Germanic rudd- (“stick, club”), from Proto-Indo-European rewdʰ- (“to clear land”). Compare Old Norse rudda (“club”). For the root, compare English rid. Presumably unrelated to Proto-Germanic rōdō (“rod, pole”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA