Well, you have the verb tatter - e.g. tattered reputation and the noun tatterdemalion and those are pretty old,
>That's a phrase I found myself using the other day. Growing up with English parents it seemed completely natural but then I wondered what does "tatty" actually mean?
>
>The verb "to tat" means to make lace; maybe it refers to a lacy/holey/worn appearance?
>
>Can the English contingent shed any light on this pressing issue? ;)
>
>UPDATE: apparently "tatty" is a dictionary word for "shabby/dilapidated". That was news to me; I thought the phrase was an English colloquialism.
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
