Saturday, September 13, 2008

Word of the Week (September 14 - 20) duff; figgy duff

duff; figgy duff



Definition according to the Dictionary of Newfoundland English:

duff1 n EDD ~ sb1 1 esp Co quot; DAE 1 (1838-) for sense 1; for comb in sense 2: Cent duff-day 'on board ship, Sunday.'

1 A pudding made of flour and water, sometimes with suet and raisins added, boiled in a cloth bag; CLOTH PUDDING. FIGGY DUFF, STOGGER.

[1856] 1975 WHITELEY 56 Today we have chowder (cod) breakfast, duff (flour pudding) for dinner (with W.I. Molasses).

1883 HATTON & HARVEY 305 On three days of the week dinner consists of pork and 'duff,' the latter item consisting of flour and water with a little fatty substance intermixed 'to lighten it.' When boiled it is almost as hard as a cannon-ball.

[1886] LLOYD 36 The fare usually consists of salt pork, duff, molasses, tea, and codfish; on which the changes are rung from January to December in each year.

1924 ENGLAND 151 Then they got pork an' duff three times a week, an' hard biscuit an' tea.

[1926] 1946 PRATT 174 "The Cachalot": The weather fair, the weather rough, / With watch and sleep, with tack and reef, / With swab and holystone, salt beef / And its eternal partner, duff.

1936 SMITH 52 Ready or raw give the men their 'duffs' and let us get on the ice.

[1960] 1965 PEACOCK (ed) i, 141 "On the Schooner John Joe": We ate a bang-belly, we had Sure enough, / We made a good meal of the fat pork and duff. T 178/9-65 A duff and a pudding is two different things. A pudding is cooked into a pudding cloth and tied up; a duff is [made in] a bag about so long, and you put your dough in the bag, and he's small down under and big on top. When you'd take un out of the pot, you would untie him and take hold by the end and the duff would shoot out in the pan. That was the rig of a duff!

1977 BURSEY 24 The duff was made of water and flour and a generous addition of raisins and all saturated with molassses. We called it a figged duff and it was indeed a luxury.



2 Comb duff bag: cloth bag in which pudding is boiled (1924 ENGLAND 315). duff day: day of the week when a boiled pudding is customarily served at the main meal. C 70-15 Dinner was at 1 p.m. and again there was a heavy meal designed for a particular day; Tuesday and Thursday were 'duff' days when the meal was vegetables of different kinds, salt beef or salt pork, and pease pudding. M 71-103 Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays were 'duff days.'

1977 BURSEY 24 Tuesday was 'duff day' and we must buy the necessaries.

duff 2 n EDD ~ sb1. A blow, esp a kick in the backside.
[1968] 1976 Culture & Tradition 37 [He] comes up and gives him a good swift duff in the hole. P 148-79 He's so stubborn that I want to give him a duff.

Supplement:



duff1 n 1 1984 WRIGHT 15 These meals usually consisted of salt fish or meat, with 'duffs' of steamed flour. Sweet duff--with a bit of molasses--was served [the sealers] Sundays.


duff2 n P 301-83 'I'll give you a hard duff.'

Now, we invite you to RELiVE, REMEMBER and REFRESH iT and/or even REDEFiNE iT!

The main thing is to RELiSH iT.

N.B. Any Word of the Week receiving more than 10 posts will trigger a prize from Rattling Books for our favourite.

We also invite you to visit our facebook group .The word of the week is released each Sunday morning on the Newfoundland and Labrador CBC Radio program Weekend Arts Magazine with host Angela Antle.

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