Pitmedden

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A village in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, known for its historic estate and famous formal gardens laid out in traditional geometric style
2. A small Scottish settlement in the Aberdeenshire region, home to a country estate whose celebrated formal gardens attract visitors
3. The name of a place in northeast Scotland, a rural village near Ellon that includes an estate with carefully planned ornamental gardens

Etymology: In Scotland, a farmhouse often had its dung heap in the yard just outside the door, and the heap was known as a pitmedden. The first half, "pit," is a hollow in the ground, here a sunken or walled area where manure was gathered. The second half, "midden," is an older word for a dunghill, borrowed into English from Scandinavian. Its roots lie in Old Norse words for dung and heap, which is why the two parts together describe the same thing twice. A large pitmedden was a visible sign of a well-stocked farm, since a farmer needed plenty of animals and fodder to build one up. Scots writers and speakers used the word in everyday farm talk, and it survives in dictionaries of Scots as a regional term for this farmyard feature.