plodder

From Middle English plodder, equivalent to plod +‎ -er.

plodder (plural plodders)

1. One who plods.
   • 1842, Robert Browning, The Pied Piper of Hamelin, London: Frederick Warne, 1888, p. 18,

     Brown rats, black rats, grey rats, tawny rats,

     Grave old plodders, gay young friskers […]

2. A person who works slowly, making a great effort with little result; a person who studies laboriously.
   • c. 1594, William Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act I, Scene 1,

     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.

   • 1939, Robert James Manion, Life is an Adventure, Toronto: Ryerson Press, Part Two, II, p. 43,

     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.