Obs. exc. dial. [Identical in form and meaning with, and prob. a. Welsh cader ‘chair,’ in Mid. Welsh also ‘cradle’; used also as in sense 2, and applied to a ‘framework’ of various kinds. (If sense 3 is not the same word, we may perh. compare F. cadre frame.)]
† 1. A cradle. Obs.
a. 1225. Ancr. R., 82. Heo makeð of hire tunge cradel [MS. Cleop. cader] to þes deofles bearn, and rockeð it. Ibid., 378. Hwon ȝe beoð ibunden wiðinnen uour large wowes, and he in a neruh kader [MS. Titus D cradel].
2. A light frame of wood put over a scythe to lay the corn more even in the swathe.
1679. Plot, Staffordsh. (1686), 353. Their barley they mow with the Sithe and Cadar in the South parts of the County.
3. ‘A small frame of wood, on which a fisherman keeps his line’ (dial.) Halliwell.
1880. Miss Courtney, West Cornwall Gloss. (E. D. S.).
