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Allin

caddy

nounnounverbattested in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈkædi//
  • United States//ˈkædi//
  • United States/[-ɾi]/

A small box or tin (can) with a lid for holding dried tea leaves used to brew tea.

noun

  1. 1

    A small box or tin (can) with a lid for holding dried tea leaves used to brew tea.

    The Carneses imported lacquer teapoys in sets. These sets could be easily stacked in a corner of the drawing room and brought out at teatime to hold a teacup, a set, or a caddy. The Carneses purchased lacquered teapoys sets for four dollars in China and probably sold them for twice that amount in America.

  2. 2

    A (usually small) box, chest, or tin with a lid, and often with partitions, used to keep things in.

    A sauce caddy brought with the tacos offers a choice of salsa cruda, a thin puree of tomatillos, and an emulsion of red chilies.

  3. 3

    A small lidded bin for food waste.

  4. 4

    A movable tray or other mechanism for holding (sometimes within a piece of equipment or machinery), securing, and transporting a removable component.

    Place the disc in the DVD caddy.

  5. 5

    A lightweight wheeled cart; specifically, one attached to a bicycle as a conveyance for a child, or pulled by hand and used to transport groceries away from a shop.

Etymology

An alteration of catty (“(unit of) weight used in China, equivalent to 1⅓ pounds avoirdupois (about 0.605 kilograms)”), borrowed from Malay kati (“weight used in China, Indonesia, and Japan”), from Tamil கட்டி (kaṭṭi, “measure of weight; clod, lump”), from கட்டு (kaṭṭu, “to coagulate, congeal, or consolidate (into a concretion); to harden”).

noun

  1. 1

    Variant of caddieAlternative spelling of caddie (“a person hired to assist a golfer by carrying their golf clubs and providing advice”).

    Caddy, pass me my five iron.

    As caddy I had to carry the clubs, for there are four varieties almost everyone used, and some used more. Besides doing this, the caddy has to keep score of the number of strokes used, and watch and find each ball.

    Then Carter Chapman picked out his putter, stepped confidently up to the ball, sighted once along the ground, and made his stroke. The ball rolled straight as a die toward the caddy who was holding the flag, and tinkled into the cup for a birdie three!

Etymology

A variant of caddie (etymology 1).

verb

  1. 1

    Chiefly followed by for: alternative spelling of caddie (“to serve as a caddy (noun sense) for a golfer”)

    I was honored to caddy for Tiger Woods at a charity golf game.

    We took turns caddying, one caddying, two playing. We went out across the river to the teeing ground of the first hole.

    The next day the thirty-two qualifying players were paired off into sixteen sets of opponents. Charlotte was matched against a girl from California. After the first few minutes, the result was never in doubt. "Take it easy, miss," said the highly gratified Mr. Ogilvie, who was caddying for Charlotte. "You hold her in the hollow of your hand."

    The scheme had been, if I remember, that after lunch I should go off and caddy for Honoria on a shopping tour down Regent Street; but when she got up and started collecting me and the rest of her things, Aunt Agatha stopped her.

Forms

plural
caddies
past tense
caddied
past participle
caddied
present participle
caddying
third person singular
caddies
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).