dudgeon, dudgeon, dudgen, etc.

[Stephen Goranson]

OED has three entries:
(1) dudgeon, n.1. A kind of wood used by turners, esp. for handles of knives daggers, etc.; dagger hilt; dagger.
(2) dudgeon, n.2 and adj. A feeling of anger, resentment, or offence; ill humour; Resentful; ill-humored.
" Origin unknown; identical in form with dudgen n. and adj.<http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/58233#eid6086442>; but provisionally separated as having, so far as is known, no connection of sense."
(3) dudgen, n. and adj. Poor stuff, trash; mean, poor contemptible; ? ordinary, homely. "...perhaps the same as dudgeon n.1<http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/58234#eid6086542> : a dagger with a handle of this material being cheap and often regarded as an inferior, unreliable weapon; ..."

The wood may have been softwood, possibly from roots, not always considered top quality. See, e.g., the note in the 1873 New Variorum edition of MacBeth ("And on my blade and dudgeon gouts of blood"):
http://books.google.com/books?id=bAsVAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA90&lpg=PA90&dq=appiatum&source=bl&ots=cn4zqPL0w1&sig=BNhIfmfUSnZMJpVfnhsWzhaeDzc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=rosBUKviLIf48gTPzMGjCA&ved=0CDsQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=appiatum&f=false

Dudgeon (2) is often preceeded by the verb "take," which at least raises the question whether "take the handle" (literally or figuratively) might connect the senses. E.g., in a 1577 edition of Hollinshed's Chronicles (EEBO): ".....takyng the matter in dudgeon, made no more wordes,...."

The same book may combine the emotion sense and the weapon sense:
...taking this knauishe knacke in dudgeon, burled [hurled?]his Dagger at him...

A figurative use:
1602   T. Dekker Satiro-mastix sig. (OED & EEBO),   I am too well ranckt..to bee stab'd with his dudgion wit. [Perhaps compare Shakespeare 1603 "speake daggers."]

Another text that may be worth considering (at HathiThrust) is
Bibliotheca scholastica : a double dictionarie, penned for all those that would haue within short space the use of the Latin tongue, either to speake, or write ... / compiled by Iohn Rider ...
by Rider, John, 1562-1632
Published 1589, unnumbered page, col. 3
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=ucm.5327258510;seq=145;size=300;view=image

A.  Dudgeon haft.
I.  Manubrium apiattum.
Taking a thing in dudgeon.
I. Indignatus, p.

Stephen Goranson
www.duke.edu/~goranson

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