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."
Synonyms
Examples of ruddy in a Sentence
Jay Bennett, Smithsonian Magazine, 14 Oct. 2024
One pot of beans — made into a soup of ruddy pinquitos — is already a bounty that affords meals for days, with broth that only gets tastier over time.
—Betty Hallock, Los Angeles Times, 13 Oct. 2024
The pink-gold is not ruddy red, and the silvered dial is subtly luminescent.
—Allen Farmelo, Robb Report, 29 Sep. 2024
Munk, who is stocky, with ruddy skin and a shock of strawberry-blond hair, served this course to me himself.
—Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker, 23 Sep. 2024
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Cite this Entry
“Ruddy.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ruddy. Accessed 22 Nov. 2024.
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ruddy
adjective
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