By Betty Kirkpatrick
Yatter is one of those Scots words that does not immediately suggest its nationality. For quite a while I had not realised the word was Scots, although it is a word I use reasonably frequently, especially when I am on a trainful of mobile yatterers. But yatter is definitely Scots and it makes an appearance in all the Scots dictionaries.
Yatter means to talk on seemingly endlessly about very little. The word is onomatopoeic in origin and has been coined to imitate the sound made by somebody chattering at length. It is pronounced to rhyme with natter and shares a similarity in meaning with it. However, yatter is more likely to be used in a critical way. In this respect it is more like witter.
As indicated earlier, yatter can be used of people who spend journeys chattering away incessantly into their mobile phones, rather than reading, admiring the scenery or just taking some time to think. Some people are fortunate enough to be paid to yatter on. You must have heard them on television on occasions such as election nights – commentators and politician rambling on while they wait for something interesting to happen.
Politicians are particularly noted for their tendency to yatter. It is fitting, therefore, that a website which collates and keeps us up to date with the musings and activities of politicians is entitled Yatterbox.
Yatter can also be used to mean to talk loudly and unintelligibly. This use is sometimes unfair. It is quite frequently applied to people speaking animatedly in their own language, but a language that is foreign and unintelligible to the listener who describes it as yattering. You may hear it used when a group of people from another country are getting on a bus trying to explain to each other the complications of the local public transport. They are often accused of yattering and holding up the rest of the passengers.
Yatter can also mean to nag or carp on about something. Such yattering is popularly assumed to be the preserve of women. If this is true, and I query the truth of it, it is often because men never listen first time round.
Not only people yatter. It can be used of animals. For example, dogs when yelping can be described as yattering. It can be used of flowing water, as in a yattering river, and it can be used of teeth chattering with fear, cold, etc.
Some dictionaries suggest that yatter is to be found in English also. Like many Scots words it is certainly likely to be found over the border in parts of northern England, but I am not convinced that it has penetrated the deep south to any great extent. A personal straw poll suggests that it has not. The dictionary entries could be a result of the fact that a large proportion of lexicographers are Scots – influenced, whether consciously or not, by their own language.
In meaning, yatter has much in common with the modern ubiquitous phrase yada yada yada, or yadda yadda yadda, which we inherited from America. It has been suggested that this phrase has its origin in yatter. In fact the origin of the phrase is uncertain, but there are more plausible contenders than yatter, although it is possible that yatter had more success in America than it did in England. However, seems much more likely that the yada phrase has its origins in the Jewish–American slang of the 1940s.
I am not a huge fan of yada yada yada, either the concept or the phrase. I much prefer the homespun yatter.
Betty Kirkpatrick is the former editor of several classic reference books, including Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary and Roget’s Thesaurus. She is also the author of several smaller language reference books, including The Usual Suspects and Other Clichés published by Bloomsbury, and a series of Scots titles, including Scottish Words and Phrases, Scottish Quotations, and Great Scots, published by Crombie Jardine.
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