CHIPPIT FRUIT, adj.

The definition of chippit in the Dictionaries of the Scots Language is succinct:

“damaged, especially of fruit”.

We have oral examples from Edinburgh, such as this from 1992:

“Until circa 1975 chippit fruit was labelled as such in Rankins’ fruit shops”.

And this from 1993:

“My father always brought a big bag of fruit home on Friday nights and woe betide any of us if we were caught eating chippit fruit”.

Earlier, this poem to the editor of the Leven Advertiser and Weymss Gazette (1916) by M McVey bemoaned wartime shortages:

“That you should thankful be You get your livin’ wi’ your pen, An no a shop - like me. If you but kent the miles I rin, For things I haven’t got; Empty boxes, chippit fruit, An’ carrots for the pot”.

And a writer in the Aberdeen Evening Express (1983) recalled her childhood in the old tenements:

“At the bottom of our backie wis auld Jimmy Lobban’s fruit shed, and, my God, we got oorsel in some grief, as we used to slide off the top looking for left over chippit fruit”.

Writing in the Diary column of the Scotsman (1998), Dennis O’Donnell was unimpressed by Radio 4’s Today programme’s list of potential personalities “of the Millennium”:

“For one, it is crushingly unimaginative … Caxton, Newton and Darwin worthy but dull (smudgy books, chippit fruit and monkey puzzles), but Cromwell?”

In 2001 Dennis O’Donnell also described hiding expensive items in the trolley from his wife

“... when she’s away looking for bargains in stale rolls or chippit fruit”.

This Scots Word of the Week comes from Dictionaries of the Scots Language.

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