Doreen Tovey
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In Old English, there were two related words referring to red coloring: rēad and rudu. Rēad evolved into our present-day red. Rudu evolved into rud (a word now encountered only in dialect or archaic usage) and ruddy. Most often, ruddy is applied to the face when it has the red glow of good health or is red from a suffusion of blood from exercise or excitement. It is also used in the names of some birds, such as the American ruddy duck. In British English, ruddy is also used as a colorful euphemism for the sometimes offensive intensive bloody, as 20th-century English writer Sir Kingsley Amis illustrates in The Riverside Villas Murder: "Ruddy marvelous, the way these coppers' minds work.... I take a swing at Chris Inman in public means I probably done him in."
Examples of ruddy in a Sentence
Doyle Rice, USA TODAY, 10 Mar. 2025
Earth is backlit by the sun during a lunar eclipse, so all the sunlight falling on the lunar surface is passing through the thickest part of our atmosphere, bathing the moon in a ruddy glow.
—Phil Plait, Scientific American, 6 Mar. 2025
The ruddy shelduck, or Tadorna ferruginea, is also known in India as the Brahminy duck, according to The Guardian, which reports the bird winters in southern Asia but breeds in Europe.
—Lauren Irwin, The Hill, 4 Feb. 2025
The Venice Prosecutor's Office has opened a probe into the killing of a rare ruddy shelduck that was seen dead in a video featuring President Donald Trumps' eldest son, in December, said La Nuova Venezia.
—Dan Perry, Newsweek, 19 Feb. 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Ruddy.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ruddy. Accessed 22 Mar. 2025.
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ruddy
adjective
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