Word.ws English Dictionary

scriddan

scriddan noun: a kind of landslide in which rain loosens the side of a mountain or hill and rocks slide down.

Noun

scriddan (plural scriddans)

  1. (Scotland, rare) A kind of landslide in which rain loosens the side of a mountain or hill and rocks slide down.
    • AUCHUIRN, in the Shire of Ross: and in the Parish of Kintail. This is now a Farm in Glenelchaig, but was once a populous Town, which, in 1745, was rendered uninhabitable by an awful Scriddan or Mountain Torrent, and has since been converted into a grazing District.1813, Nicholas Carlisle, A Topographical Dictionary of Scotland and of the Islands in the British Seas ...: Being a Continuation of the Topography of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
    • "The showers here are much more violent than any in the Lowlands," said Bonclair. "Not so bad as they are farther in the hills," said the minister. "There they are so destructive, that I have seen entire clachans ruined, and whole fields covered by a scridan." "What is a scridan?" inquired Mr...1820, Glenfergus: A novel, page 203

Forms of scriddan

pluralscriddans
alternative formscridan

Origin of scriddan

A relation to Old Norse skriða (“landslide, scree”) or an unattested Old English cognate thereof, *scridan (plural of *scride), has been suggested, as has derivation from a Gaelic word sgriodan, itself perhaps from Norse. Compare scree.

Questions about scriddan

What does scriddan mean?
Scriddan means a kind of landslide in which rain loosens the side of a mountain or hill and rocks slide down.
What part of speech is scriddan?
Scriddan is a noun.
What is the plural of scriddan?
The plural of scriddan is scriddans.

Words near scriddan in the dictionary

  1. scriblers
  2. Scribner
  3. Scribner Creek
  4. Scribonian
  5. scrid
  6. scriddan
  7. scriddans
  8. scrids
  9. scried
  10. scries
  11. scrieve

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: scriddan (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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