I am aware of the currently popular slang meaning of brat, but on its own it wouldn’t have inspired a post. However, Len Pennie (see this LH post from last year) has a charming Instagram video in which she produces a Scots equivalent: clipmalabor /ˈklipməˌlabəɾ/ “A senseless, silly talker, applied to a thoughtless country wench”; “a girl who does as little work as possible.” She thinks this should be revived as a positive description of “my girlies,” and I can’t disagree — it’s a great word. Thanks, Sven!
I followed up on the SND’s etymology of clipmalabor as a possible crossing of clip ‘colt; impudent girl’ and an earlier slip-me-labour. Some notes for those who are interested:
The first citation for slip-me-labaur in the SND, from 1843 in John Nicholson, Historical and Traditional Tales in Prose and Verse: Connected with the South of Scotland, is here, first line on page 83. Note also the etymology for slip-me-labaur given in the other work cited by the SND, on p. 230 here. There is even more in the under SND under slip:
For the ulterior etymology of element clib, note Scottish Gaelic clib ‘anything dangling loosely; a stumble’ and cliob ‘stumble, slip’ with clibein, cliob, cliobadh, cliobag-eich, cliobag-eich, and many other similar derived words on page 151 here in the Scottish Gaelic dictionary of Macleod and Dewar. Is the connection to ‘filly’ via ‘clumsy, ungainly, as a young horse’ or via ‘having excrescences, i.e. shaggy, of a colt or filly shedding its shaggy foal coat’? Is there a connection between the two meanings ‘shaggy tuft, matted hair’ (as in Scottish Gaelic clib, Irish clibín) and ‘stumble’ (Scottish Gaelic cliobaire ‘clumsy, awkward, silly person’; Irish cliobaire ‘man of strong build’), and if so, how? ‘Tripping over something dangling’?
I wonder what the ulterior etymology of clib, cliob is in Scottish Gaelic and Irish is. Note beside these Scots clype. Maybe more later, or perhaps other LH readers can dig something up
Thanks — I was too lazy to look into the etymology!
Generic 21st-Century Pop-Culture Icon, with “positive” affect: “Where my thoughtless country wenches at?!”
@Xerib
The eDIL does not have an appropriate etymon I can find with cl-onset (unless you think these words can be derived from clipe “hook, barb”). The closest I could find are coipp “foam” (for “excrescence”) and colp(th)ach [capuill] “yearling heifer [foal]”. There are other examples to show these forms could conceivably have resulted in the present forms. If you do not have a handbook where you can look up Modern Irish forms to see the Middle Irish forms, you could use https://cadhan.com/droichead/index-en.html
Thanks for that Cadhan dictionary — I’ve added it to the sidebar.