plod

noun

1. (uncountable)A slow or labored walk or other motion or activity.

   “We started at a brisk walk and ended at a plod.”

   “Germany can’t afford to stick to the stately plod into decline that Merkel initiated any longer. Merz will have to act fast, and break things to pull the country out of the quagmire it finds itself in.”

2. (obsolete)A puddle.
3. (UK, derogatory, mildly, uncountable, usually, with-definite-article)the police, police officers
4. (UK, countable, derogatory, mildly, usually)a police officer, especially a low-ranking one.

verb

1. (intransitive)To walk or move slowly and heavily or laboriously (+ on, through, over).

   “The beast that bears me, tired with my woe, Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,”

   “I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, his sea chest following behind him in a handbarrow;”

2. (transitive)To trudge over or through.

   “Quest[ion]. Where was Ioseph? Answ[er]. It may be, he was playing the Carpenter abrode for all their three livings, but sure it is, he was not idlely plodding the streetes, much lesse tipling in the Taverne with our idle swingers.”

   “1799, Matthew Gregory Lewis, The Love of Gain, London: J. Bell, p. 50, lines 449-451, […] Speed thou to Lombard-street, Or plod the gambling 'Change with busy feet, 'Midst Bulls and Bears some false report to spread,”

   “Break no rosemary, bright with rime And sparkling to the cruel clime; Nor plod the winter land to look For willows in the icy brook To cast them leafless round him […]”

3. (intransitive)To toil; to drudge; especially, to study laboriously and patiently.

   “On Sundays I keep plodding along at my job.”

   “1597, Michael Drayton, “Edward the fourth to Shores wife” in Englands Heroicall Epistles, London: N. Ling, Poore plodding schoolemen, they are farre too low, which by probations, rules and axiom’s goe, He must be still familiar with the skyes, which notes the reuolutions of thine eyes;”

4. (transitive)To extrude (soap, margarine, etc.) through a die plate so it can be cut into billets.