Word.ws English Dictionary

gurry-butts

gurry-butts is the plural of gurry-butt.

Meaning of gurry-butt

Noun

gurry-butt (plural gurry-butts)

  1. (West-Country, obsolete) A horse- or ox-drawn cart used for carrying dung.
    • The "GURRY-BUTT," or DUNG-SLEDGE, of Devonshire, is a sort of sliding cart, or barrow; usually of a size proper to be drawn by one horse: sometimes it is made larger; I have seen four oxen drawing compost upon a fallow, in one of these little Implements; which might, anywhere, be made useful, on...1796, William Marshall, “Agriculture”, in The Rural Economy of the West of England, volume 1 ("West Devonshire"), page 121
  2. (obsolete) A large cask used for holding fish offal.
    • "'Wouldn't hev your conscience fer a thousand quintal," said Dan. "Turn in, Penn. You've no call to do boy's work. Draw a bucket, Harvey. Oh, Penn, dump these in the gurry-butt 'fore you sleep. Kin you keep awake that long?"¶ Penn took up the heavy basket of fish-livers, emptied them into a cask...1897, Rudyard Kipling, chapter 2, in Captains Courageous

Questions about gurry-butts

What is gurry-butts the plural of?
Gurry-butts is the plural of gurry-butt.

Words near gurry-butts in the dictionary

  1. Gurrundah
  2. gurry
  3. gurry-but
  4. gurry-buts
  5. gurry-butt
  6. gurry-butts
  7. gurrybutt
  8. gurrybutts
  9. gursh
  10. gurshes
  11. Gurski

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gurry-butts (page history and authors); gurry-butt (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.

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