tath

See also: tað

English

Alternative forms

• teathe, tathe

Etymology 1

From Middle English tath, from Old Norse tað (“manure”), from Proto-Germanic *tadą (“manure”), from Proto-Indo-European *dāy- (“to divide, split, part, section”). Cognate with Icelandic tað (“manure, dung”), dialectal Swedish tad (“manure, dung”).

Noun

tath (countable and uncountable, plural taths)

1. (UK, dialectal, agriculture, historical or archaic, Scotland) The dung of livestock left on a field to serve as manure or fertiliser.
   • 1804, Arthur Young, The Farmer's Calendar:

     after the sheep have trod out a great quantity of stones, in feeding off turnips, to have them raked up clean, which I have known some farmers do, nor can the rake be used without taking some of the tathe, or dung, with them .

2. (UK, dialectal, agriculture, histortical or archaic, Scotland) A piece of ground dunged by livestock.
3. (UK, dialectal, agriculture, historical or archaic, Scotland) Strong grass growing around the dung of kine.

Etymology 2

From Middle English tathen, from Old Norse teðja (“to manure”), from Proto-Germanic *tadjaną (“to strew, scatter”), from Proto-Indo-European *dāy- (“to divide, split, part, section”). Cognate with Icelandic teðja (“to dung, manure”), Norwegian tedja (“to dung”), German zetten (“to let fall in small pieces, let crumble”).

Verb

tath (third-person singular simple present taths, present participle tathing, simple past and past participle tathed)

1. (UK, dialectal, agriculture, historical or archaic, Scotland) To manure (land) by pasturing cattle on it, or causing them to lie upon it.
   • 1808, Agricultural Surveys: Inverness:

     I would have no more ploughed than has been tathed the preceding year

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “tath”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

Anagrams

• hatt, that