Word.ws English Dictionary

tatty

/ˈtæti/

tatty noun: a potato. Also the alternative form of tat.

Noun (1)

tatty (plural tatties)

  1. (Geordie, Northern England, Scotland) A potato.
    • I'm buying fucking tatties.2022, Liam McIlvanney, The Heretic, page 245
    Synonyms:
    spud, tater

Adjective

tatty (comparative tattier, superlative tattiest)

  1. Tattered; dilapidated, distressed, worn-out, torn.
    • The tramp wore a tatty old overcoat.
    • I wish you would have smiled in the bakery
      Or sat on a tatty settee
      At a mutual friend's gathering2007, Arctic Monkeys, “The Bakery”, in Fluorescent Adolescent
    Synonyms:
    ratty

Noun (2)

tatty (plural tatties)

  1. (India) A woven mat or screen hung at a door or window and kept wet to moisten and cool the air as it enters.
    • […] tatties are placed in front of the verandahs to keep out the rains during the monsoon; […]1855, Pharoah and Co, A Gazetteer of Southern India, page 553

Noun (3)

tatty (plural tatties)

  1. A kind of reggae dance move.

Also used as

tatty is also the alternative form of tat.

Examples of tatty in a sentence

  • I have arrived to catch the 0830 TfW service to Crewe, worked by a tatty and unrefurbished 175114.2020 December 2, Paul Bigland, “My weirdest and wackiest Rover yet”, in Rail, page 67:
  • Hubbard says he could easily take on more books than he would be able to sell, and some “tatty paperbacks” have such a low value that they end up getting recycled.2025 July 22, Lucy Knight, “‘Look how well-read I am!’ How ‘books by the metre’ add the final touch to your home – or your image”, in The...

Synonyms of tatty

Forms of tatty

Noun
pluraltatties
Adjective
comparativetattier
superlativetattiest

Origin of tatty

Clipping of potato + -y.

From tatter + -y.

From Hindi [Term?].

Words formed from tatty

Phrases with tatty

Words that rhyme with tatty

6 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about tatty

What does tatty mean?
Tatty means a potato.
How do you use tatty in a sentence?
I have arrived to catch the 0830 TfW service to Crewe, worked by a tatty and unrefurbished 175114.
What part of speech is tatty?
Tatty can be a noun or an adjective.
How do you pronounce tatty?
Tatty is pronounced /ˈtæti/.
What is the plural of tatty?
The plural of tatty is tatties.

Words near tatty in the dictionary

  1. tatts
  2. tattu
  3. tattus
  4. tattva
  5. tattvas
  6. tatty
  7. tatty bye
  8. tatty cake
  9. tatty cakes
  10. tatty scone
  11. tatty scones

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tatty (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-tatty.ogg.

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