rickle

rickle

English

Etymology

From Scots, from Old English hrēac (“stack”) with the Scots suffix -le (“full (of)”).

Noun

rickle (plural rickles)

1. (chiefly Scotland) A loose, disordered collection of things; a heap; a jumble.
   • 1932, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Sunset Song, Canongate Books (2008), →ISBN, page 22:

     It was no more than a butt and a ben, with a rickle of sheds behind it where old Pooty kept his donkey that was nearly as old […]

2. (chiefly Scotland) A small rick of grain.
3. (chiefly Scotland) A dilapidated or ramshackle building.
   • 1844, Jane Welsh Carlyle, letter to Thomas Carlyle dated 28 June 1844, re-printed in New Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle (ed. Alexander Carlyle), John Lane (1903), pages 136-137:

     We came home by a place called Speke Hall — built 1589 — the queerest-looking old rickle of boards that I ever set eyes on; […]

4. (chiefly Scotland) Any object in poor condition, particularly a vehicle.
   • 1899, Golf Illustrated, Volume 2, page 93:

     On a memorable night was the old rickle of a boat taken out to the West Sands during a terrible storm, when Admiral Maitland Dougall distinguished himself by his valiant services.

5. (chiefly Scotland) An emaciated person or animal.
   • 1899, Seumas MacManus, In Chimney Corners: Merry Tales of Irish Folk Lore, Doubleday & McClure (1899), page 228:

     But it's a bad disaise that can't be cured somehow, Manis said to himself — so be began to consider how to sell his rickle of a pony to advantage.

Quotations

• For more examples of usage of this term, see Citations:rickle.

Related terms

• rick
• rickle o' banes

Anagrams

• Rickel, ickler, licker, relick

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Scots

Noun

rickle (plural rickles)

1. A rickle (a heap, a jumble).
   • 1831, Sir Walter Scott, The Antiquary, Baudry's Foreign Library (1831), page 109:

     Rab Tull keepit a highland heart, and bang'd out o' bed, and till some of his readiest claes — and he did follow the thing up stairs and down stairs to the place we ca' the high dow-cot, (a sort of little tower in the corner of the auld house, where there was a rickle o' useless boxes and trunks,) and there the ghaist gae Rab a kick wi' the tae foot, […]

2. A rickle (a ramshackle building).
   • 1898, S. R. Crockett, Lochinvar, Harper & Brothers Publishers (1898), page 2:

     "Na, 'deed, Alisoun Begbie," cried Mistress Crombie once more, from the check of the door, "believe me when I tell ye that sic a braw city madam — and a widow forbye — doesna bide about an auld disjaskit rickle o' stanes like the Hoose o' the Grenoch withoot haeing mair in her head than just sending warnings to Clavers aboot the puir muirland folk, […]

3. A rickle (any object in poor condition).
   • 1863, David Wingate, "Address to an Ass", in Poems and Songs, William Blackwood and Sons (1863), page 92:

     Thou kicks thy rickle o' a cart

     Wi' angry heels.

Quotations

• For more examples of usage of this term, see Citations:rickle.

Related terms

• rickle o' banes