NPPF Still curious

[Michael Joseph]

Perhaps like cloutery it means the following ...

Like or characteristic of a botcher; clumsy, awkward; clownish.

  1675 E. PHILLIPS Theatr. Poet. Pref. 14 Spencer, with all his Rustic,
obsolete words, with all his rough-hewn clowterly Verses. a1707 BP.
PATRICK Autobiog. (1839) 194 The coffin..of elm, hooped with iron, very
coarse and clouter[l]y. 1712 J. JAMES tr. Le Blond's Gardening 32 The
Designs..made Parterres look very heavy and clouterly. 1741 RICHARDSON
Pamela.  I. (1824) 112 Some clouterly plow-boy. 1826 SCOTT Woodst. xx,
Huge clouterly shoes. 1842 BRONTE Shirley. II. (1842) 243 A clouterly
scrivener made idle lemniscates over his legal papers, which made poor
father savage.


On Fri, 26 Sep 2003, sZ wrote:

> By the way, what does 'cloutish' mean? One of the definitions of
> 'clout' is a powerful baseball hit, so it's an intriguing descriptor for
> Shade. I just realized I had been reading it as 'loutish.'
>
>
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