reasty

English

Etymology

Uncertain.

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -iːsti

Adjective

reasty (comparative more reasty, superlative most reasty)

1. (UK, dialect) Rusty and rancid; applied to salt meat.
   • 1557 February 13 (Gregorian calendar), Thomas Tusser, A Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandrie, London: […] Richard Tottel, →OCLC; republished London: […] Robert Triphook, […], and William Sancho, […], 1810, →OCLC:

     Much bacon is reasty

   • 1599, Thomas Nashe, Nashes Lenten Stuffe:

     So I could pluck a crow with Poet Martial for calling it puire halec, the scauld rotten herring; be he meant that of the fat, reasty Scottish herrings, which will endure no salt, and in one month (bestow what cost on them you will) wax rammish if they be kept.

   • 1908, Thomas B. Finney, Handy Guide: For the Use of Pork Butchers, Butchers, Bacon Curers, Sausage and Brawn Manufacturers, Provision Merchants, Etc.:

     Moist and muggy weather will turn it reasty sooner than anything.

   • 1914, Henry Boddington, “William Dover: A Buckinghamshire Worthy”, in The Manchester Quarterly, volume 33, page 6:

     The on'y flesh meaat we 'ad fur the six on us i' the wik wer' 2 lbs. of what we termed Rang-tank baacon— a reasty article it wer' too — but to me then, even the salt and the reasty crust on it were delicious.

2. (by extension, UK, dialect) Rank and smelly.
   • 1983, Margery Allingham, More Work For the Undertaker, page 67:

     His nose led him to the top of the basement stairs and there almost dissuaded him. Jessica might have been tanning, the atmosphere was so remarkable. He went quietly down into the reasty dark.

   • 2018, Ronan J O'Shea, Bad Bread, Good Blues:

     Now, I picture the Romanesque beauty of Vinohrady, the reasty—yes, reasty—squalor of Žižkov, with its endless graffiti and bohemian charm, and Jiřího z Poděbrad, with its sea of pink and yellow and blue apartment blocks of various mild hues: a storybook fantasy, an architect's dream.

   • 2019, Nicholas Freer, ‎Bobby Xinyue, Reflections and New Perspectives on Virgil's Georgics:

     That said, Sackville-West's 'mild' epic is more capacious than Lembke's line, since it can accommodate an elaboarate poem such as 'Nocturne' with which she closes 'Spring', a poem which celebrates the nightingale's song and the music of the spheres, alongside her efforts 'to document the age-old Kentish skills and processes and the Kentish landscape', such as castrating the male lambs ('He shall turn little rams to little tegs') and carting manure ('the dung-cart with its reasty load').

   • 2021, Sebastian Groes, ‎R. M. Francis, Smell, Memory, and Literature in the Black Country, page 93:

     There's a chap who used to come here used to work at our place we used to call him reasty Roy.

3. (UK, dialect) Cranky and unmanageable.
   • 1897, Fenland Notes and Queries:

     The horse turned reasty and would not start for some time.

   • 1906, Francis Beaumont, The Maids Tragedie:

     You'l lie downe shortly. Get you in, and worke! What, are you growne so reasty you want heates?

   • 1978, Logophile - Volume 2, Issue 6, page 10:

     "Methingks you Clithereare's nun hath a reasty look , forsooth!" "Reasty?", retorted that housewife, " Callest thou me a whipper-ginnie, thou hufty-tufty cumtwang?"

Related terms

• reastiness

Anagrams

• stayre, Treysa, estray, starey, satyre, Stayer, tyrase, e-trays, yarest, stayer