plodder

noun

1. A person who, or animal that, plods.

   “Brown rats, black rats, grey rats, tawny rats, Grave old plodders, gay young friskers […]”

   “Mules and horses were individually plodders, or ‘flash,’ or rogues.”

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”

   “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 besides to make me go over them to-night.”

   “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 companions who attended lectures, and follows the records of their lives, one is strengthened in this belief because the facts show that the steady plodders have gone further than have some of those brilliant lads of other days.”

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.”