▪ I. polt, n. Obs. exc. dial.
(pəʊlt)
[Origin obscure: in sense 1 it may be a variant of palt n.; but cannot easily be connected with pelt. It is not certain that sense 2 is the same word.]
1. A blow, a hard rap or knock. Now dial.
| c 1610 MS. Bodl. 30 lf. 24 b, I tooke him a polt of the pate. a 1700 B. E. Dict. Cant. Crew, Polt on the Pate, a good Rap there. 1700 J. Asgill Argument 103 If any one hath spite enough to give me a polt,..I only desire them first to qualify themselves for my Executioners. a 1739 Jarvis Quix. ii. x. (1749) 162 One of those who stood close by him..lifted up a pole he had in his hand, and gave him such a polt with it as brought Sancho Pan{cced}a to the ground. 1782 F. Burney Cecilia ii. ix, He'd go nigh to give me a good polt of the head. a 1825 Forby Voc. E. Anglia, Polt, a hard driving blow. 1849 Blackw. Mag. LXVI. 702 [It] fetched me an awful polt in the right side. |
† 2. A pestle or club (cf. polt-foot). Obs.
| 1612 Capt. Smith Map Virginia 17 Their corne they rost in the eare greene, and bruising it in a morter with a Polt, lappe it in rowles in the leaues of their corne. |
† b. The club-shaped stem and bulb of a leek.
| 1635 Markham Eng. Husb. ii. i. ii. 9 You shall cut the blades [of leeks] to the polt. |
▪ II. polt, v. Now dial.
[f. prec. n.]
trans. To knock, thrash, beat, bang.
| 1649 W. Blithe Eng. Improv. Impr. (1653) 179 Then polt it, or faulter it as some call it, that is, beat it over again in the husk. 1669 Worlidge Syst. Agric. (1681) 329 To Polt, to beat or thrash. 1706 Phillips, To Polt (Country-Word), to beat, bang, or thrash. 1831 Lower T. Cladpole cxxxviii, I aim'd ma swish an levell'd well, To polt un on de head. |
Hence polting-lug (dial.): see quot.
| 1853 Jrnl. R. Agric. Soc. XIV. ii. 441 In Herefordshire the ordinary mode of gathering the fruit is by sending men to beat the trees with long slender poles or rods,..these poles are provincially termed ‘polting lugs’. |
▪ III. polt
obs. form of poult.