cad

Etymology

Short for caddie, from Scots, from French cadet, from dialectal capdet (“chief, captain”), from Latin capitellum, diminutive of caput (“head”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kæd/
• Rhymes: -æd

Noun

cad (plural cads)

1. A low-bred, presuming person; a mean, vulgar fellow.
   • 1922, Ben Travers, chapter 5, in A Cuckoo in the Nest:

     The most rapid and most seductive transition in all human nature is that which attends the palliation of a ravenous appetite. […] Can those harmless but refined fellow-diners be the selfish cads whose gluttony and personal appearance so raised your contemptuous wrath on your arrival?

2. (historical) A person who stands at the door of an omnibus to open and shut it, and to receive fares; an idle hanger-on about innyards.
   • Charles Dickens, Omnibuses (in Sketches by Boz)

     We will back the machine in which we make our daily peregrination from the top of Oxford-street to the city, against any buss on the road, whether it be for the gaudiness of its exterior, the perfect simplicity of its interior, or the native coolness of its cad.

See also

• no way to treat a lady

Anagrams

• ACD, ADC, CDA, DAC, DCA

Alternative forms

• cadu

Etymology

From Vulgar Latin *cadeō, from Latin cadō. Compare Daco-Romanian cădea, cad.

Verb

cad (third-person singular present indicative cadi/cade, past participle cãdzutã)

1. I fall.

Etymology

From Old Irish cid, from Proto-Celtic *kʷid, from Proto-Indo-European *kʷid, compare *kʷis.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kad̪ˠ/

Pronoun

cad

1. (interrogative, Connacht, Ulster) what

Further reading

• “1 cía” in Dictionary of the Irish Language, Royal Irish Academy, 1913–76.
• “cad” in Foclóir Gaeḋilge agus Béarla, Irish Texts Society, 1st ed., 1904, by Patrick S. Dinneen, page 103.
• "cad" in Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla, An Gúm, 1977, by Niall Ó Dónaill.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kad/
• Rhymes: -ad

Verb

cad

1. first-person singular present indicative of cădea.
2. first-person singular present subjunctive of cădea.
3. third-person plural present indicative of cădea.

Noun

cad ?

1. white

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kaːd/

Etymology 1

From Proto-Celtic *katus (compare Old Irish cath).

Etymology 2

Verb

cad

1. impersonal preterite of cael

Mutation