scriddan

English

Etymology

A relation to Old Norse skriða (“landslide, scree”) or an unattested Old English cognate thereof, *scridan (plural of *scride),[1] has been suggested, as has derivation from a Gaelic word sgriodan, itself perhaps from Norse. Compare scree.

Noun

scriddan (plural scriddans)

  1. (rare, chiefly Scotland) A kind of landslide in which rain loosens the side of a mountain or hill and rocks slide down.
    • 1813, Nicholas Carlisle, A Topographical Dictionary of Scotland and of the Islands in the British Seas ...: Being a Continuation of the Topography of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland:
      AUCHUIRN, in the Shire of Ross: and in the Parish of Kintail. This is now a Farm in Glenelchaig, but was once a populous Town, which, in 1745, was rendered uninhabitable by an awful Scriddan or Mountain Torrent, and has since been converted into a grazing District.
    • 1820, Glenfergus: A novel, page 203:
      "The showers here are much more violent than any in the Lowlands," said Bonclair. "Not so bad as they are farther in the hills," said the minister. "There they are so destructive, that I have seen entire clachans ruined, and whole fields covered by a scridan." "What is a scridan?" inquired Mr Bonclair. "Why, sir," replied the minister, "when the rain, falling on the side of a hill, tears the surface, and precipitates a large quantity of stones and gravel into the plain below, we call that a scridan."
    • 1836, William Tait, Christian Isobel Johnstone, Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, page 558:
      ... Scriddans are also frequent in the wilds of Sutherland and Caithness.
    • 1864, James Grant, The Adventures of Rob Roy, page 304:
      She lay in a deep chasm of the wild rocks, at the base of a steep mountain, the sides of which had been bared and rent by the scriddans of a thousand years - for so the natives term those water-torrents which at times hurl down gravel and massive stones, in vast heaps, to desolate the fields, the shore, or whatever may lie at the foot of these rugged [peaks].
    • 1878, Matthew Forster Heddle, The County Geognosy and Mineralogy of Scotland, page 253:
      The extreme looseness of the stones upon hill slopes had often puzzled the writer. Upon hill tops, the constant drench and drain of water cleans out and sweeps off all small particles and binding clay; upon most rock-runs and "scridans," the surface-stones at least, have been chance-caught, as each was experimenting for itself upon the angle of rest. These are evident; but the cause of the looseness of stones upon moderate slopes, and in such positions as that on Bræbag, the writer only attained to the knowledge of, very recently. Mentally he saw it, or saw through it, a few years ago on the clifffoot of Cranstacach; visually he saw it operating a year or two after, upon Am Binnian, in Perthshire. […]

Alternative forms

References

  1. ^
    1884, Cambridge Philological Society, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, page 11:
    Observe also [regarding scridans] that the Icel. skriða belongs to the weak declension; the A.S. equivalent would be *scride, with a pl. *scridan, which is just the form required to explain the Ross-shire form.

Further reading

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