tod

The word "tod" is an old dialect term for a fox, often especially for a male fox. It is mainly linked with Scotland and Northern England, and today it sounds literary, regional, or historical rather than normal everyday English. In most modern contexts, people simply say "fox," and if they need to be more exact, they may say "dog fox" for the male and "vixen" for the female.

You may come across the word in older literature, traditional tales, or titles such as Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Mr. Tod, where it clearly means a fox. There is also a separate old noun, "tod," that means a unit of weight once used for wool. That is a different sense of the word. So, in vocabulary study, the main thing to remember is this: when "tod" appears in an animal or story setting, it usually means a fox, often a male one, and it gives the sentence an old rural British tone.