crottle
crottle noun: any of various lichens gathered for dyeing, especially those of the genus Parmelia.
Noun
crottle (plural crottles)
- Any of various lichens gathered for dyeing, especially those of the genus Parmelia.
- It was known and uſed as a dye-ſtuff in the Highlands of Scotland by the name of corkes or crottel, ſome hundred years ago.1791, John Sinclair, The Statistical Account of Scotland, volume 12, page 113
- Not that crotal and white was as humdrum as a simple definition of it as ‘brown and white’ implies. Crotal was the grey lichen which, over hundreds of years, had grown over the moorland rocks particularly1982, Finlay MacDonald, Crotal & White, page 128
- Synonyms:
- stone-rag
Examples of crottle in a sentence
- Parmelia omphalodes and P. saxitilis, the “crottles” used traditionally in Britain and Ireland, are sub-alpine lichens in North America.1993, Karen Leigh Casselman, Craft of the Dyer: Colour from Plants and Lichens, Dover Publications, page 270:
- The older people, they knew all about the dyes, and we’d go and gather the crottles [a kind of moss used for dyeing woolens].1993, Joan Morrison, Charlotte Fox Zabusky, American Mosaic: The Immigrant Experience in the Words of Those Who Lived It, University of...
Synonyms of crottle
Forms of crottle
| plural | crottles |
|---|---|
| alternative form | crotal |
| alternative form | crottel |
Origin of crottle
From Scots crottle, from Scottish Gaelic crotal.
Questions about crottle
- What does crottle mean?
- Crottle means any of various lichens gathered for dyeing, especially those of the genus Parmelia.
- How do you use crottle in a sentence?
- Parmelia omphalodes and P. saxitilis, the “crottles” used traditionally in Britain and Ireland, are sub-alpine lichens in North America.
- What part of speech is crottle?
- Crottle is a noun.
- What is the plural of crottle?
- The plural of crottle is crottles.
Words near crottle in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: crottle (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “crottle.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/crottle. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.