"Whenever Angela gets lonely she comes over to natter the afternoon away with me over tea."
It may be a variant of dialectal gnatter "to nibble, chatter" or it may be a blend of "nag" and "chatter," no one knows for sure. It is a fairly recent word, first recorded in 1804 in Scotland, where it originally meant "nag, grumble, complain." It seems unrelated to "natty" as in "nattily dressed;" this word is probably a corruption of "neat." The activity is nattering and those who indulge in it are natterers. Nattery people are those with a proclivity to natter.
No comments:
Post a Comment