Gàidhlig / English
Cìob

Cìob

Posted by Abi on 5 October 2017

Cìob is my word of the week for you all. I recognised this word for meaning sheep or a bite, but today I’m discussing it as a type of red seaweed and the word was collected in Tiree. Tom wrote about the word brùchd a few months ago, another seaweed word which has more than one meaning.

The informant wrote that cìob grew on stones and it was often found in October. Cìob takes a long time to rot (as the weather is so cold at this time of year!) and so, it got the name cìob nam fàs-bheann or the rank grass of the desert hills in Dwelly’s Dictionary.

There are many, many words in our fieldwork archive about seaweed. For example, the word bruig was collected in South Uist and meant rotten seaweed, collected for manure. In Ness, they had the word cròic for a deposit of red seaweed driven ashore by the undertow.

The word cìob comes from the list of agriculture words we have from Tiree in the fieldwork archive. Do you recognise any of the others on the list? Let us know via Twitter or Facebook.

 
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