spurtle

plural spurtles · alternative spirtle · alternative spertle

1. Either of two Scottish kitchen implements made of wood: a flat one for turning oatcakes, or a stick for stirring porridge.

   One day they built a fire in the yard and made a black kettle of apple butter so big that when they stood over it and stirred the apple mash with spurtles, the scene put Ada in mind of the witches in Macbeth working at their brew.

   1997, Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain, London: Hodder and Stoughton, page 311

   1 more example

   "It was till lately believed by the ploughmen of Clydesdale, that if they repeated the rhyme Fairy, fairy, bake me a bannock and roast me a collop, And I'll gie ye a spurtle off my gadend! three several times on turning their cattle at the terminations of ridges, they would find the said fare prepared for them on reaching the end of the fourth furrow."

   1850, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, London: H.G. Bohn, page 353

present singular third person spurtles · participle present spurtling · participle past spurtled · past spurtled · alternative spirtle · alternative spertle

1. To spurt, spatter or sputter; to spurt in a scattering manner.

   Upon the head hee lent so violent a stroke, That the poore emptie skull, like some thin potsheard broke, The braines and mingled blood, were spertled on the wall

   1612, Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion, song 2 p. 29