Today’s word, from the Scots language, is Gubbed. It comes to us via D’s workplace, wherein was posted a sticky note, saying, “Hot Tap Gubbed.” We looked it up in the Dictionary of Scots Language, to come up with this entry. We suspect that definition 2 is more appropriate: “A muddy, miry or swampy piece of ground, a puddle, from Norwegian dialect gop: a pit, abyss (cf. gopel, a muddy mass).”
So, what would the word gubbed mean, then? It isn’t just that the hot tap is broken. No, it’s that it’s a pit, an abyss, and is muddy, miry, and/or swampy. It is broken, wrong, and wet. This tells you something, we think, of the expressiveness of the Scots when deprived of hot, running water. Anything that interrupts the flow of tea, here, is truly of the abyss.
– D & T
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This word might end up in a poem soon…thanks!
Will that be a rhyming poem? If so … with what will it rhyme?
Done in/exhausted/broken!
I am often gubbed!
i’m going to use this word all day friday. 😉
paz
….it can also be applied to people -as in ‘If you don’t get out of the way, I’m gonna gub you!’
I am so gubbed tonight but I didn’t know what to call it. Thanks for clearing it up for me 😉
That use of ‘gubbed’ is likely from ‘gub’, a form of ‘gab’ or ‘gob’, meaning the mouth. Someone who has been hit on the mouth can be described as being ‘gubbed’ therefore something that is ‘gubbed’ is beaten or broken. See this entry.
Alan
Thank you, Alan! It does, indeed, seem to be a better representation of the word. Nice that it could go either way, though.