rood

name

1. A surname.

noun

Etymology: From Middle English rode, rood (“cross”), from Old English rōd (“cross”), from Proto-Germanic *rōdō, *rōdǭ (“rod, pole”), from Proto-Indo-European *rōt-, *reh₁t- (“bar, beam, stem”). Cognate with German Rute (“rod, cane, pole”), Norwegian roda (“rod”). Largely displaced by cross. More at rod.

1. A crucifix, cross, especially in a church.

   “The Citizens in their rage, imagining that euery poſt in the Churche had bin one of yᵉ Souldyers, ſhot habbe or nabbe at randon^([sic – meaning random]) uppe to the Roode lofte, and to the Chancell, leauing ſome of theyr arrowes ſticking in the Images.”

   “Have you forgot me? No, by the rood, not so.”

2. A measure of land area, equal to a quarter of an acre.

   “Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth / Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth, / Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood / Changes and off he goes!) within a rood— / Bog, clay and rubble, sand and stark black dearth.”

   “[…] a bumptious fool whose god was property, not property in vast estates such as a true man might worship, but in paltry roods.”

3. An area of sixty-four square yards.
4. A measure of five and a half yards in length.

   “Thus Satan […] his other parts besides / Prone on the flood, extended long and large, / Lay floating many a rood […]”

5. The human face.

   “Nou goth sonne under wode,— Me reweth, Marie, thi faire Rode. Nou goth sonne under tre,—”