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Tuesday, 21 February 2023

Clarty



We buzzed off for a moorland walk today and after parking the car we paid a visit to the nearby café for coffee. It's usually a pretty good way to begin this particular walk, but this time we chose a sausage roll to go with the coffee and Mrs H said the sausage roll was clarty. I agreed - it was certainly clarty.

It occurred to me to check if clarty is a dialect word, which apparently it is and has various meanings. Here in our bit of Derbyshire it is often used to describe food which lacks texture and ends up sticking to the teeth. Those sausage rolls were definitely clarty so we'll avoid them in future.

clarty
adjective
-ti
-er/-est
dialectal
: bedaubed with sticky dirt : DIRTY, MUDDY
also : STICKY, GOOEY

11 comments:

The Jannie said...

It's used North of the border as dirty, sticky, etc; a Scottish stage worse than clarty ia "mauchit".

Doonhamer said...

Oop here t'other side of 'adrian's Wa' that is a very common, still used word.
And a "clart" usually a messy clart is a mucky person sorely in need of a bath and a laundramat. And does'nae keep her front door step whitened.
I think that "mingin'" is worse than "clarty"
But "bowfin'" is as far down the scale as I know.
After that you must be into forensics.
I love dialect.

Sackerson said...

I'm told (US) Twinkies are top of the league for toothstickiness.

Sam Vega said...

Not used here in Sussex, although they have twenty different words for types of mud. Nor did I hear it when growing up in Luton, except perhaps from Scots and Northerners.

Anyway, it reminded me of Lindisfarne in their heyday:

"Sitting in a sleazy snack bar sucking
Sickly sausage rolls..."

A K Haart said...

Jannie - round here, mud could be described as clarty, but it would just mean sticky rather than dirty.

Doonhamer - I've heard "mingin'" here and there, but not "bowfin'". It might be interesting to make up a few dialect words and see if they spread across the web.

Sackers - I've seen them on the shelf in Tesco. I wondered if they would be any good as a treat for Granddaughter but after looking at the ingredients decided not.

A K Haart said...

Sam -

Slippin' down slowly
Slippin' down sideways

I looked it up, but that's what it felt like.

dearieme said...

I used to enjoy the verb "to maffle" meaning to blunder, to make a cock-up. You could maffle a catch at cricket or rugby, for instance.

It proved especially useful when MinAg was called MAFF. They maffled everything.

dearieme said...

I also liked "glaur" which is sticky mud. And "slooter" which is a not very viscous slurry. And "foosty", the degraded state reached by, for instance, rubber which has seen too much light and oxygen.


I also admired the distinction between "snot" and "snotter", the latter being the runny kind and the former the sticky.

Above all, when we started French at school we revelled in answering the question direct with "Je ne dinna ken pas, Sir".

Anonymous said...

As a native of the North East, currently living in the South, "claggy" is a word I often have to explain.
Penseivat

A K Haart said...

Penseivat - here in Derbyshire, I'm familiar with the word 'claggy'. I assume people know what I mean, but perhaps that's not always the case.

A K Haart said...

dearieme - I've never heard of any of those except "snot",but not "snotter". I like "Je ne dinna ken pas, Sir", although I'd never have said anything like that to our French teacher. He was quite scary.