Word.ws English Dictionary

strunt

strunt noun: spirituous liquor; alcoholic drink.

Noun (1)

strunt (countable and uncountable, plural strunts)

  1. (Scotland, uncountable) Spirituous liquor; alcoholic drink.
    • Syne, wi' a social glass o' strunt, / They parted aff careerin / Fu' blythe that night.1785, Robert Burns, Halloween
  2. (Scotland, countable) A drink of spirits; a dram.
  3. (UK, countable, dialectal) A sulky fit; sullenness.
    • Wow, man, that's unco sad! --Is that ye'r jo Has ta'en the strunt!1720, Allan Ramsay, Poems, page 161

Verb

strunt (third-person singular simple present strunts, present participle strunting, simple past and past participle strunted)

  1. To walk boldly.
    • "Upo' the hill" the callan cries, "She cock'd her gaucy runt; An' to Strathfallan green Burn-brae, Fu' nimbly she did strunt.1789, David Davidson, Thoughts on the Seasons, &c., page 50
    • High were their hopes for food and cash, And drink to keep them strunting, Which cures the yisk and waterbrash, And sets the pipe a lunting1876, “The Big Man's Burial”, in The Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, page 266

Noun (2)

strunt (plural strunts)

  1. (UK, dialectal) A tail or rump
    • The Brain is acknowledged by all, to be the Fountain, from whence Sinews have their rise; particularly, there is derived thence one great Tendon, which passeth through the cavity of Neck and Back-bone, extending it self to the nethermost joint of the Strunt.1673, Robert Almond, The English Horsman and Complete Farrier, page 46
    • A tanner's dog invited another dog of his intimate acquaintance to an entertainment, but the latter dog not being satisfied with his feast, as he came away feloniously stole away the strunt of a tail , and the tanner's dog soon after hearing of the felony, quarrelled with his acquaintance, upon...1829, Stephen Glover, The History of the County of Derby, page 613
  2. (UK, dialectal) Anything short or contracted

Examples of strunt in a sentence

  • Your impudence protects you sairly, I canna say but ye strunt rarely Owre gauze and lace.1900, Robert Burns, “To A Louse, On Seeing One On a Lady's Bonnet At Church”, in The Complete Poetical Works of Robert Burns, page 52:
  • 's a pretty little doggy! — ay! — yes! — he is, yes! — Wag thy strunt, then!1961, D.H. Lawrence, “Adolf”, in Edward David McDonald, editor, Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers of D.H. Lawrence, page 16:

Forms of strunt

Noun
pluralstrunts
Verb
third-person singular presentstrunts
present participlestrunting
past participlestrunted
paststrunted

Origin of strunt

Of obscure origin. Cognate with Scots strunt (“spirits, whisky, toddy”).

Compare Middle High German strunze (“stump”).

Words formed from strunt

Questions about strunt

What does strunt mean?
Strunt means spirituous liquor; alcoholic drink.
How do you use strunt in a sentence?
Your impudence protects you sairly, I canna say but ye strunt rarely Owre gauze and lace.
What part of speech is strunt?
Strunt can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of strunt?
The plural of strunt is strunts.

Words near strunt in the dictionary

  1. strung-out
  2. Strunga
  3. Strunk
  4. Strunkian
  5. Strunks
  6. strunt
  7. strunted
  8. strunting
  9. struntish
  10. strunts
  11. strunty

Source and license

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