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pollard

Pronunciation: /ˈpɒl.əd/

The English word “pollard” has 7 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A pruned tree; the wood of such trees.
  2. A buck deer that has shed its antlers.
  3. A hornless variety of domestic animal, such as cattle or goats.
  4. A European chub (Squalius cephalus, syn. Leuciscus cephalus), a kind of fish.
  5. A fine grade of bran including some flour. The fine cell layer between bran layers and endosperm, used for animal feed.
  6. A 13th-century European coin minted as a debased counterfeit of the sterling silver penny of Edward I of England, at first legally accepted as a halfpenny and then outlawed.

verb

  1. To prune a tree heavily, cutting branches back to the trunk, so that it produces dense new growth.

Etymology

From Middle English poll (“head”) + the pejorative suffix -ard (“person characterized by or associated with something, often in a negative way”). The suffix has the same meaning as in drunkard and coward. When used as a verb, it is often used to mean a cut head, which originates from the terms usage in cattle, where "pollarded" is used to mean "headed," as opposed to horned.

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.