subs. (old colloquial).—Confusion; bother: cf. PUCKER. Also as verb. = to bustle; to search; to dabble; to POTTER (q.v.).
[?]. Harl. MS., 388 [HALLIWELL]. My Lorde Willoughbie’s counsell, though to little purpose, made a great deale of PUDDER.
1605. SYLVESTER, Du Bartas, i. 5.
| Some almost alwaies PUDDER in the mud | |
| Of sleepy Pools. |
1609. BEAUMONT and FLETCHER, The Scornful Lady, ii. 2. Some fellows would have cried out now … and kept a PUDDER.
1641. MILTON, An Apology for Smectymnuus [Works (1806), i. 211]. Able enough to lay the dust and PUDDER in antiquity, which he and his, out of stratagem, are wont to raise.
1663. DRYDEN, The Wild Gallant, i. You need not keep such a PUDDER about eating his words.
1664. COTTON, Scarronides, or Virgil Travestie, 19. Then, then indeed, began the PUDDER.
1674. N. FAIRFAX, A Treatise of the Bulk and Selvedge of the World, ‘To the Reader.’ So long as he who has but a teeming brain, may have leave to lay his eggs in his own nest, which is built beyond the reach of every mans PUDDERING POLE.
c. 1698. LOCKE, Of the Conduct of the Understanding, 13. Contrary Observations, that can be of no other Use but to perplex and PUDDER him if he compares them.
1647. WARD, The Simple Cobler of Aggawam in America, 2. Such as are least able, are most busy to PUDDER in the rubbish, and to raise dust in the eyes if more steady Repayers.
1759. STERNE, Tristram Shandy, II. ii. What a PUDDER and racket!
1870. JUDD, Margaret, i. 16. Parkins’s Pints has been makin’ a great PUDDER over to England.
