Word.ws English Dictionary

reasty

reasty adjective: rancid, "rusty" (applied to salt meat).

Adjective

reasty (comparative more reasty, superlative most reasty)

  1. (UK, dialectal) Rancid, "rusty" (applied to salt meat).
    • Much bacon is reasty1557 February 13 (Gregorian calendar), Thomas Tusser, A Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandrie, London: […] Richard Tottel, →OCLC; republished London: […] Robert Triphook, […], and William Sancho, […]...
    • So I could pluck a crow with Poet Martial for calling it puire halec, the scauld rotten herring; be he meant that of the fat, reasty Scottish herrings, which will endure no salt, and in one month (bestow what cost on them you will) wax rammish if they be kept.1599, Thomas Nashe, Nashes Lenten Stuffe
  2. (UK, broadly, dialectal) Rank and smelly.
    • His nose led him to the top of the basement stairs and there almost dissuaded him. Jessica might have been tanning, the atmosphere was so remarkable. He went quietly down into the reasty dark.1983, Margery Allingham, More Work For the Undertaker, page 67
    • Now, I picture the Romanesque beauty of Vinohrady, the reasty—yes, reasty—squalor of Žižkov, with its endless graffiti and bohemian charm, and Jiřího z Poděbrad, with its sea of pink and yellow and blue apartment blocks of various mild hues: a storybook fantasy, an architect's dream.2018, Ronan J O'Shea, Bad Bread, Good Blues
  3. (UK, dialectal) Cranky and unmanageable.
    • The horse turned reasty and would not start for some time.1897, Fenland Notes and Queries
    • You'l lie downe shortly. Get you in, and worke! What, are you growne so reasty you want heates?1906, Francis Beaumont, The Maids Tragedie

Examples of reasty in a sentence

  • Moist and muggy weather will turn it reasty sooner than anything.1908, Thomas B. Finney, Handy Guide: For the Use of Pork Butchers, Butchers, Bacon Curers, Sausage and Brawn Manufacturers, Provision...
  • There's a chap who used to come here used to work at our place we used to call him reasty Roy.2021, Sebastian Groes, R. M. Francis, Smell, Memory, and Literature in the Black Country, page 93:
  • "Methingks you Clithereare's nun hath a reasty look , forsooth!" "Reasty?", retorted that housewife, " Callest thou me a whipper-ginnie, thou hufty-tufty cumtwang?"1978, Logophile - Volume 2, Issue 6, page 10:

Forms of reasty

comparativemore reasty
superlativemost reasty

Origin of reasty

Uncertain. Perhaps a variant of resty.

Words that rhyme with reasty

Questions about reasty

What does reasty mean?
Reasty means rancid, "rusty" (applied to salt meat).
How do you use reasty in a sentence?
Moist and muggy weather will turn it reasty sooner than anything.
What part of speech is reasty?
Reasty is an adjective.

Words near reasty in the dictionary

  1. reastonish
  2. reastonished
  3. reastonishes
  4. reastonishing
  5. reasts
  6. reasty
  7. reata
  8. reatard
  9. reatas
  10. reate
  11. reattach

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: reasty (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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