rutty

/ˈɹʌti/

rutty adjective: imprinted with ruts.

Adjective (1)

rutty (comparative ruttier, superlative ruttiest)

Imprinted with ruts.
- a rutty country road
- But I’m oblig’d each day to roam
  Many a furlong from my home,
  And cry, good luck, whene’er I pick
  From off the ground a single stick;
  Or, in some long and rutty lane,
  I find by chance a single grain.1767, George Saville Carey, “The Peasant and Ant. A Fable”, in The Hills of Hybla, London: for the author, page 14
Synonyms:

rutted
(US, dated) In a rut (dull routine).
- Constantly vary your way of doing things; avoid humdrum, rutty, and monotonous ways.1893, Frederick S. Parkhurst, Work and Workers: Practical Suggestions for the Junior Epworth League, New York: Hunt & Eaton, page 63
- Everywhere we see men who have gone to seed early, become rutty and uninteresting, because they worked too much and played too little.1913, Orison Swett Marden, The Joys of Living, New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, page 97
Related to a rut; being in a state of sexual arousal.
- I am lying here stifling in the rutty goat smell1970, Ramon Guthrie, “Loin de Moi …”, in Maximum Security Ward, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, page 45
- You may even get picked up by a German soldier. They’re a rutty bunch now that they’re away from their fat frauleins and meeting some real French women.2001, Fred Mustard Stewart, chapter 30, in The Savages in Love and War,, New York: Forge, page 275
Synonyms:

ruttish, lustful

rutty (comparative ruttier, superlative ruttiest)

rutty (plural rutties or ruttys or ruttees)

(India, obsolete) A unit of weight used for metals, precious stones and medicines, equivalent to 1+¹⁄₂ grains.
- […] they immediately desired to capitulate, and sent him, by way of ransom, a perfect diamond weighing two hundred and twenty four ruttys […]1768, Firishta, translated by Alexander Dow, The History of Hindostan, London: T. Becket and P.A. de Hondt, Volume 2, Section 12, p. 112
- [Sapphires] of ten to fifteen rutties without a flaw are common, whereas a perfect ruby of that size is hardly ever seen.1858, Henry Yule, Narrative of the Mission … to the Court of Ava, London: Smith, Elder, Appendix, “Note on Metals, Minerals, &c., of Burma,” p. 348

[…] old acquaintances separated by long rutty distances, or cooled acquaintances separated by misunderstandings concerning runaway calves […]1861, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter X, in Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and...
We drove way out to the desert the other side of town and turned on a rutty dirt road that made the car bounce as never before.1957 September 5, Jack Kerouac, chapter 5, in On the Road, New York, N.Y.: Viking Press, →OCLC:
We get lazy, then the church becomes rutty.1922, Edgar Hurst Cherington, chapter 23, in The Line is Busy,, New York: Abingdon Press, page 26:

From rut + -y.

From Hindi रत्ती (rattī), literally “the seed of the plant Abrus precatorius.”

What does rutty mean?: Rutty means imprinted with ruts.
How do you use rutty in a sentence?: […] old acquaintances separated by long rutty distances, or cooled acquaintances separated by misunderstandings concerning runaway calves […]
What part of speech is rutty?: Rutty can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce rutty?: Rutty is pronounced /ˈɹʌti/.

Adapted from Wiktionary: rutty (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: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-rutty.wav.

Cite this entry: “rutty.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rutty. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.