A new (to me) word

[shewhomust]

Spotted in my local paper (which still survives, just about) the story of a little girl who fas donated her long hair to a good cause (story here). This wasn't altogether a sacrifice: the six-year-old explains that "My hair was really long and every morning when I brushed it it was so cottery. Now it is so much easier."

I hadn't met 'cottery' before, and at first I thought it must be a misprint. But no: her mother complains of "trying to get the cotters out." So this must be a word for tangles, but it's one I haven't met.

My Shorter Oxford doesn't know it either, though it does give 'cotted', meaning 'matted', applied particularly to a fleece. Online, Collins Dictionary lists it as a new word, suggested for inclusion and being monotored for evidence of usage (in 2012).

But outside the dictionaries, an internet search turns up more examples, and not just in a quiz about dialect: it does seem to be north-eastern, though ...

Comments

[nineweaving]

Fascinating. The OED finds "Cotter," meaning "An entanglement; figurative a difficulty, trouble, worry" from 1875. No mention of hair. But the verb "Cotter, " meaning "To form into a tangled mass; to entangle, mat, ‘cot,'" is recorded from 1781 in the north-east. Here, "Cottered, Cotted" is explicitly "entangled, matted together. The word is usually applied to hair, or wool." So "cotters" looks like a back formation.

Nine

[shewhomust]

Oh, thank you!

[larryhammer]

Huh!

[shewhomust]

What can I say? That's the English language for you!