Paddle

Paddle. (1) A verb, meaning to splash, dabble or play about in water with the feet or hands. (2) A species of oar, with a broad flat blade and short handle, used without a rowlock for propelling canoes or other lightly-built craft (see Canoe). (3) A small spade-like implement, apparently first used to clear a ploughshare from clods of earth. The verb seems to be a frequentative form of "pad," to walk, cognate with "path," or of "pat," to strike gently, an onomatopoeic word; it may have been influenced by the Fr. patrouiller, in much the same sense. The verb may have given rise to "paddle," an oar, an easy transition in sense; but the New English Dictionary identifies this with the word for a small spade, which occurs earlier than the verb, and seems to have no connexion in sense with it. The implement was known in the 17th and 18th centuries also as "spaddle," a diminutive of "spade," but "paddle" occurs in this sense as early as 1407. The term "paddle" has been applied to many objects and implements resembling the oar in its broad-bladed end: e.g. a shovel used in mixing materials in glass-making, in brick-making, &c., and also to the float-boards in the paddle-wheel of a steamboat or the wheel of a watermill.