different between rooty vs rutty

English

Etymology

root +? -y

Adjective

rooty (comparative rootier, superlative rootiest)

1. Full of roots.
   • 2012, Douglas M. Considine, Foods and Food Production Encyclopedia (page 2023)

     Disk plows also are better suited to rough, stony, and rooty ground because the disks ride over the obstructions.

Derived terms

• rootiness

English

Etymology 1

rut +? -y

Adjective

rutty (comparative ruttier, superlative ruttiest)

1. Imprinted with ruts.

   Synonym: rutted

   a rutty country road

   • 1767, George Saville Carey, “The Peasant and Ant. A Fable” in The Hills of Hybla, London: for the author, p. 14,^[2]

     But I’m oblig’d each day to roam

     Many a furlong from my home,

     And cry, good luck, whene’er I pick

     From off the ground a single stick;

     Or, in some long and rutty lane,

     I find by chance a single grain.

   • 1861, George Eliot, Silas Marner, Edinburgh: William Blackwood, Part 1, Chapter 10, p. 174,^[3]

     […] old acquaintances separated by long rutty distances, or cooled acquaintances separated by misunderstandings concerning runaway calves […]

   • 1957, Jack Kerouac, On the Road, New York: Viking, 1997, Chapter 5, p. 281,^[4]

     We drove way out to the desert the other side of town and turned on a rutty dirt road that made the car bounce as never before.

2. (US, dated) In a rut (dull routine).
   • 1893, Frederick S. Parkhurst, Work and Workers: Practical Suggestions for the Junior Epworth League, New York: Hunt & Eaton, p. 63,^[5]

     Constantly vary your way of doing things; avoid humdrum, rutty, and monotonous ways.

   • 1913, Orison Swett Marden, The Joys of Living, New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, p. 97,^[6]

     Everywhere we see men who have gone to seed early, become rutty and uninteresting, because they worked too much and played too little.

   • 1922, Edgar Hurst Cherington, The Line is Busy, New York: Abingdon Press, Chapter 23, p. 26,^[7]

     We get lazy, then the church becomes rutty.

3. Related to a rut; being in a state of sexual arousal.

   Synonyms: ruttish, lustful

   • 1970, Ramon Guthrie, “Loin de Moi …” in Maximum Security Ward, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, p. 45,^[8]

     I am lying here stifling in the rutty goat smell

   • 2001, Fred Mustard Stewart, The Savages in Love and War, New York: Forge, Chapter 30, p. 275,^[9]

     You may even get picked up by a German soldier. They’re a rutty bunch now that they’re away from their fat frauleins and meeting some real French women.

Etymology 2

Adjective

rutty (comparative ruttier, superlative ruttiest)

1. (obsolete) Full of roots.

   Synonym: rooty

   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, Prothalamion, London: William Ponsonby,^[10]

     […] the shoare of siluer streaming Themmes,

     Whose rutty Bancke, the which his Riuer hemmes,

     Was paynted all with variable flowers,

   • 1610, Giles Fletcher, Christs Victorie, and Triumph in Heauen, and Earth, Over, and After Death, Cambridge, p. 47,^[11]

     […] whistling reeds, that rutty Iordan laues,

     And with their verdure his white head embraues,

     To chide the windes,

Etymology 3

From Hindi [Term?], literally “the seed of the plant Abrus precatorius.”

Noun

rutty (plural rutties or ruttys or ruttees)

1. (India, obsolete) A unit of weight used for metals, precious stones and medicines, equivalent to 1.5 grains.
   • 1768, Alexander Dow (translator), The History of Hindostan by Firishta, London: T. Becket and P.A. de Hondt, Volume 2, Section 12, p. 112,^[12]

     […] they immediately desired to capitulate, and sent him, by way of ransom, a perfect diamond weighing two hundred and twenty four ruttys […]

   • 1858, Henry Yule, Narrative of the Mission [...] to the Court of Ava, London: Smith, Elder, Appendix, “Note on Metals, Minerals, &c., of Burma,” p. 348,^[13]

     [Sapphires] of ten to fifteen rutties without a flaw are common, whereas a perfect ruby of that size is hardly ever seen.

   • 1870, Norman Chevers, A Manual of Medical Jurisprudence for India, Calcutta: Thacker, Spink, p. 227,^[14]

     […] vast numbers of infatuated wretches have accustomed themselves to consume from 6 rutties (9 grains) to a rupee’s weight (180 grains) of nearly pure opium daily […]

References