pod

Etymology

From Middle English *pod ("seed-pod, husk, shell, outer covering"; attested in pod-ware (“legume seed; seed grain”)), likely from Old English pād (“an outer garment, covering, coat, cloak”), from Proto-West Germanic *paidu, from Proto-Germanic *paidō (“coat, smock, shirt”), from Proto-Indo-European *baiteh₂- (“woolen clothes”). Cognate with Old Saxon pēda (“skirt”), German dialectal Pfeid, Pfeit (“shirt”), Gothic 𐍀𐌰𐌹𐌳𐌰 (paida, “mantle, skirt”), Albanian petk (“gown, garment, dress, suit”), Ancient Greek βαίτη (baítē, “goat-skin, fur-coat, tent”).

noun

1. (botany) A seed case for legumes (e.g. peas, beans, peppers); a seedpod.
2. A small vehicle, especially used in emergency situations.
3. (obsolete, UK, dialect) A bag; a pouch.
4. (collective, zoology) A group of whales, dolphins, seals, porpoises or hippopotami.
5. (by extension) A group of people who regularly interact.
   These matrilineal groups associate with related families, who are probably sister lineages, to form pods. 2016, Joseph Henrich, chapter 8, in The Secret of Our Success[…], Princeton: Princeton University Press
   For many people forming pods last year, finding compatible people to group with was not a cost but a goal. Private companies that create educational software for pods report that people prefer to group with their friends in order to reduce the incentive to have social contacts outside of their pods. 2021-10-01, Calder Katyal, “Schools Need to Undo the Damage of Pods”, in The Atlantic
6. A small section of a larger office, compartmentalised for a specific purpose.
7. A subsection of a prison, containing a number of inmates.
8. A nicotine cartridge.
9. A lie-flat business or first class seat.
10. A tapered, cylindrical body of ore or minerals.
11. A straight channel or groove in the body of certain forms of, usually tapered, augers and boring-bits.
12. (informal, Internet) Clipping of podcast.

verb

1. (intransitive) To bear or produce pods
   Wherefore it was, that many ignorant Mardians, who had not pushed their investigations into the science of physiology, sagely divined, that the Tapparians must have podded into life like peas, instead of being otherwise indebted for their existence. 1849, Herman Melville, Mardi, and a Voyage Thither
   David looked seawards along the river. He stared, rubbed his eyes, and stared again. One of the rocks seemed to have podded into something swollen, black and smooth. 1939, Leonard Alfred George Strong, The Open Sky, page 64
   In the herbaceous border many flowers had seeded and podded; spears of them, brown, now rose up behind the mauve blur of the michaelmas daisies. 2012, Deborah Moggach, You Must Be Sisters, page 219
2. (transitive) To remove peas from their case.
3. (transitive, intransitive) To put into a pod or to enter a pod.
   Thus the torpedoes will have to be stored internally or be podded into streamline containers. 1955, Military Review - Volume 35, Issue 9, page 81
   Lycoming is working on a twin T53 or T55 turboprop installation whereby two engines would be podded together to drive a single propeller. 1957, Aviation Week - Volume 66, page 23
   One, called An- 12BZ-2, was a single-point hose-and- drogue tanker similar to the RAF's Lockheed C-130K Hercules C.1K, except that the hose drum unit was podded, not built in. 2004, Yefim Gordon, Dmitriy Komissarov, Antonov An-12 Cub, page 90
   This was to be achieved by increasing the number of Lotarev D-18T engines to 8 by podding the inboard pylons on each side to take two engines (see Fig. 7). 2006, Journal of the British Interplanetary Society - Volume 59, page 130
   In June 2009, the company opened another facility in Tianjin to provide nacelle and thrust-reverser MRO services and to support engine buildup and podding work for the new Airbus A320 assembly line in the same city. 2011, Roger Cliff, Chad J. R. Ohlandt, David Yang, Ready for Takeoff: China's Advancing Aerospace Industry
   Then i was podded by a buddie of mine, working the burrough next to mine, all humans had a blue rabbit glow around them and seemed to sleep walk out of the burrough out in to a field while a sound like; ta-ta-dah-taaa, soundeḍ ̣̪continously [sic], where they waited while looking up in the sky. 2012, Gabriel Blue Melchizedek, The Alienvirus
4. (intransitive) To swell or fill.