One of the words for cowboy, especially a cowboy who
drifted from ranch to ranch and helped out in busy times. Jo Mora and
Ramon Adams both suggest that the word derived from
wad, something used to fill in, but this notion isn't widely accepted. Neither is the suggestion that it comes from
chewing tobacco. To add to the mystery, waddy first meant "
rustler", then "
cowboy". Also spelled waddie.
Woad (also wad), is a plant grown, mostly in England to make a blue dye consisting primarily of
indigotin. It was supplanted by
indigo, then later by
synthetic dyes. People who worked the woad plantations in the
Fens of
Holland,
Lincolnshire, and
Cambridgeshire still call it wad, just as it was pronounced 1000 years ago. People who worked in the woad fields were called waddies, or less frequently woadmen. (From
Woad in the Fens by
Norman T. Wills) It likely crossed the
Atlantic with
migrant agricultural workers (cowboys).