Paddy

How to spell paddy

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce paddy

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does paddy mean?

1. nounA field where rice is grown, or rice grain that is still in its husk.
2. nounAn informal British and Irish term for a fit of bad temper or sulking.

Paddy in a sentence

• The farmers flooded the paddy before planting the young rice.

• He threw a paddy when his train was cancelled again.

• Each paddy was bordered by a low mud wall to hold the water.

• She got into a real paddy over the parking fine.

Where does paddy come from?

Language of origin: Other

In its agricultural sense the word comes from the Malay word padi, which simply meant rice while it was still growing in the field or sitting unhusked in its grain. English traders and colonists in Southeast Asia picked it up during the early 1600s, and it settled into English with the doubled consonant and the familiar -y ending that make it look like a homegrown word. From there the phrase 'paddy field' developed for the flooded plots where rice is cultivated, and over time 'paddy' alone came to mean both the crop and the field. A quite separate informal sense, a fit of bad temper, grew up in British and Irish English in the nineteenth century from Paddy, a nickname for the Irish name Patrick, reflecting an unkind old stereotype about a quick temper. Because the two senses travelled into English by completely different routes, they happen to share a spelling by coincidence rather than by any shared root.

How the word is built

• padi (Malay: rice in the husk)
• anglicised -y spelling