A straight, round stick, shaft, bar, cane, or staff. • A longitudinal pole used for forming part of a framework such as an awning or tent. • A long slender usually tapering pole used for angling; fishing rod. • A stick, pole, or bundle of switches or twigs (such as a birch), used for personal defense or to administer corporal punishment by whipping. • An implement resembling and/or supplanting a rod (particularly a cane) that is used for corporal punishment, and metonymically called the rod, regardless of its actual shape and composition. • A stick used to measure distance, by using its established length or task-specific temporary marks along its length, or by dint of specific graduated marks. • A unit of length equal to 1 pole, a perch, ¹⁄₄ chain, 5+¹⁄₂ yards, 16+¹⁄₂ feet, or exactly 5.0292 meters (these being all equivalent). • An implement held vertically and viewed through an optical surveying instrument such as a transit, used to measure distance in land surveying and construction layout; an engineer's rod, surveyor's rod, surveying rod, leveling rod, ranging rod. The modern (US) engineer's or surveyor's rod commonly is eight or ten feet long and often designed to extend higher. In former times a surveyor's rod often was a single wooden pole or composed of multiple sectioned and socketed pieces, and besides serving as a sighting target was used to measure distance on the ground horizontally, hence for convenience was of one rod or pole in length, that is, 5+¹⁄₂ yards. • A unit of area equal to a square rod, 30+¹⁄₄ square yards or ¹⁄₁₆₀ acre. • A straight bar that unites moving parts of a machine, for holding parts together as a connecting rod or for transferring power as a driveshaft. • A rod cell: a rod-shaped cell in the eye that is sensitive to light. • Any of a number of long, slender microorganisms. • A stirring rod: a glass rod, typically about 6 inches to 1 foot long and ¹⁄₈ to ¹⁄₄ inch in diameter that can be used to stir liquids in flasks or beakers. • A pistol; a gun. • The penis. • A hot rod, an automobile or other passenger motor vehicle modified to run faster and often with exterior cosmetic alterations, especially one based originally on a pre-1940s model or (currently) denoting any older vehicle thus modified. • A rod-shaped object that appears in photographs or videos traveling at high speed, not seen by the person recording the event, often associated with extraterrestrial entities. • A Cuisenaire rod. • A coupling rod or connecting rod, which links the driving wheels of a steam locomotive, and some diesel shunters and early electric locomotives. • A drain rod, being a set of segmented rods with interlocking connectors designed to remain attached even under rotation in use.