Definition of "pod"

pod

/ˈpɒd/

noun
plural pods
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.
  Quotations
  cart, that is clouted and shod, cart ladder and wimble, with perser and pod
  1557 February 13, Thomas Tusser, A Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandrie., London: […] Richard Tottel; republished London: Reprinted for Robert Triphook, […], and William Sancho, […], 1810,
4. (collective, zoology) A group of whales, dolphins, seals, porpoises or hippopotami.
5. (by extension) A group of people who regularly interact.
  Quotations
  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 October 1, 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 very small room or space for one person to inhabit, as in a capsule hotel.
9. A nicotine cartridge.
10. A lie-flat business or first class seat.
11. A tapered, cylindrical body of ore or minerals.
12. A straight channel or groove in the body of certain forms of, usually tapered, augers and boring-bits.
13. (informal, Internet) Clipping of podcast.
verb
third-person singular simple present pods, present participle podding, simple past and past participle podded
1. (intransitive) To bear or produce pods
  Quotations
  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.
  Quotations
  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.