I described something as tatty and grotty and got to wondering where those words originated; I guessed that tatty might be something to do with old clothes or rags, and may have originated in the eighteenth century… it also a name for a potato. I don’t think the adjective tatty has much to do with a potato though! Ken Dodd, the old comedian, described things as ‘tattyfilarious’ but I am sure that is just one of his made up words. I wonder if grotty comes from grotesque, I don’t think it has anything to do with the word grotto, although the one might describe the other.
When I came to look it up, tatty seems to be a much older word than I had thought, and is related to an Old English word, tættec; I was right in supposing it might come from a word for rag, because that is what tættec meant. There is also a more recent Scottish origin – more recent being five hundred not fifteen hundred years ago, where tatty means tangled or matted like hair or wool might be. However, I also found that there is a Hindi word meaning a curtain or hanging or screen made from a sweet-smelling plant called the cuscus which was designed to cool a room by being wet or damp during the hot dry season… and lastly, I came across a malevolent sprite called Tatty Bogle who hides in potato fields and springs out and attacks people, or hides among the plants and damages them and the crop. Maybe as well as being associated with potatoes, Tatty Bogle was also scruffy and untidy and, well, tatty?
So grotty… I looked it up and found I was right, it is a slang derivative of grotesque, originating in Liverpool and brought to the wider world by the Beatles in the early 1960’s. There was an earlier Middle English word groti, but that specifically meant muddy or slimy, and the similarity is coincidental. However, I shouldn’t have dismissed the word grotto, because there is a connection; grotesque comes from grotto-esque; a grotto was how old Roman ruins used to be described, and the wall paintings on them were mimicked in garden features in the fifteenth and sixteenth century – grotesque was not at that time a pejorative term, merely a descriptive one. Grotto in turn comes from the Italian, as you might guess, and meant a cavern or cave, or hiding place. When ‘grottos’ were built in gardens they were seen as a retreat, or even a little place with a religious connection.
So, tatty and grotty… I guessed what they meant and I was almost right!
Lois Elsden 