dodge.
To avoid (something) by moving suddenly out of the way.
Meaning & usage
To avoid (something) by moving suddenly out of the way.
He dodged traffic crossing the street.
To avoid; to sidestep.
The politician dodged the question with a meaningless reply.
To elude.
To go, or cause to go, hither and thither.
To make an area of an image lighter (when processing photographs in a darkroom, this is accomplished by decreasing the exposure of that area to light).
To follow by dodging, or suddenly shifting from place to place.
To trick somebody.
Where this word comes from
Likely from dialectal dodge, dod, dodd (“to jog, trudge along, totter", also "to jerk, jig”), of uncertain origin. Perhaps from unrecorded Middle English *dodden, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *dud- (“to move”), related to Old English dydrian, dyderian (“to delude, deceive”), Middle English dideren (“to tremble, quake, shiver”), English dodder, Norwegian dudra (“to tremble”).
An act of dodging.
A trick, evasion or wile. (Now mainly in the expression tax dodge.)
A line of work.
Where this word comes from
Likely from dialectal dodge, dod, dodd (“to jog, trudge along, totter", also "to jerk, jig”), of uncertain origin. Perhaps from unrecorded Middle English *dodden, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *dud- (“to move”), related to Old English dydrian, dyderian (“to delude, deceive”), Middle English dideren (“to tremble, quake, shiver”), English dodder, Norwegian dudra (“to tremble”).
Dodgy.
Where this word comes from
Likely from dialectal dodge, dod, dodd (“to jog, trudge along, totter", also "to jerk, jig”), of uncertain origin. Perhaps from unrecorded Middle English *dodden, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *dud- (“to move”), related to Old English dydrian, dyderian (“to delude, deceive”), Middle English dideren (“to tremble, quake, shiver”), English dodder, Norwegian dudra (“to tremble”).
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.