High dudgeon

A feeling of anger and resentment dates from the mid-16th century and dudgeon in this sense is of unknown origin. The OED lists another dudgeon and dates this earlier, from the late Middle Ages, as a kind of wood used for the handles of daggers and knives. Shakespeare would have been aware of both these meanings but only used the latter, in Macbeth Act II, Scene I, “And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood, which was not there before.” The co-existence of these two very different meanings of dudgeon remains an etymological mystery.