plodder

Noun

1. A person who, or animal that, plods.
   • Brown rats, black rats, grey rats, tawny rats, Grave old plodders, gay young friskers […] - 1842, Robert Browning, The Pied Piper of Hamelin, London: Frederick Warne, published 1888, page 18:
   • Mules and horses were individually plodders, or ‘flash,’ or rogues. - 1937, Ion L. Idriess, Over the Range, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, published 1947, page 6:
2. A person who works slowly, making a great effort with little result; a person who studies laboriously.
   • Study is like the heaven’s glorious sun That will not be deep-search’d with saucy looks: Small have continual plodders ever won Save base authority from others' books - c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare,...
   • 1899, Pansy (pseudonym of Isabella Macdonald Alden), Three People, Boston: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, Chapter 21, p. 271, What an indefatigable plodder you are to get those papers ready so soon, and an unmerciful man...
   • Throughout my life […] I have been fortified in the conclusion that it is much more important for a young man to be a worker, even though not brilliant, than to be brilliant and not a worker. As one looks back at some...
3. A machine for extruding soap, margarine, etc. through a die plate so it can be cut into billets.
   • From the mill the soap passes into the hopper of the plodder. This machine feeds it automatically into a compartment where it is subjected to an enormous pressure, forming it again into a compact mass. - 1893, Henry...