Word.ws English Dictionary

summat

/ˈsʌmət/

summat pronoun: something.

Pronoun

summat (indefinite pronoun)

  1. (England, Yorkshire, indefinite, informal, pronoun, especially Lancashire) Something.
    • ...every gentleman tips us summat, we looks for it as natural as possible.1809, Theodore Hook, “Killing No Murder”, in The Sporting Magazine, volume 34, number 202, page 185
    • They require the atmosphere of a cigar and the amalgam of a sum'mat comfortable.1825 October 12, Walter Scott, Letters (published 1935), IX.245

Adverb

summat (not comparable)

  1. (England, Yorkshire, informal, especially Lancashire) Something (“to a degree”); somewhat.
    • It's summat-like to see such a man as that i' the desk of a Sunday!1859, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter VIII, in Adam Bede […], volume I, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book first, page 172

Examples of summat in a sentence

  • A man must learn summat beside Gospel to make them things.1859, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter I, in Adam Bede […], volume I, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons...
  • He were a-going to gie I summat for’n, but like enough it’ll be worth more to a gent like yourself.1929, John Cowper Powys, Wolf Solent, page 129:
  • Does he think I’ve been soaping up to the Governor or summat?1947, Thomas Armstrong, King Cotton, page 53:
  • Got summat fer yeh here – I mighta sat on it at some point, but it’ll taste all right.1997 June 26, J. K. Rowling [pseudonym; Joanne Rowling], chapter IV, in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Harry Potter; 1), London...

Forms of summat

alternative formsummit
alternative formsommat
alternative formsommit
alternative formsummut
alternative formzum'ot
alternative formsummot
alternative form (obsolete)sumat
alternative form (obsolete)summet
alternative form (obsolete)zumat
alternative form (obsolete)zummat
alternative form (obsolete)zummet
alternative form (obsolete)zummut
alternative form (obsolete)sumet

Origin of summat

Dialectal variant of somewhat attested from the 18th century. Joseph Wright suggested that it might be a contraction of "some that" in A Grammar of the Dialect of Windhill (page 78).

Questions about summat

What does summat mean?
Summat means something.
How do you use summat in a sentence?
A man must learn summat beside Gospel to make them things.
What part of speech is summat?
Summat can be a pronoun or an adverb.
How do you pronounce summat?
Summat is pronounced /ˈsʌmət/.

Words near summat in the dictionary

  1. summary jurisdiction
  2. summary offence
  3. summary offences
  4. summary proceedings
  5. summas
  6. summat
  7. summate
  8. summated
  9. summates
  10. summating
  11. summation

Source and license

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