Tetter

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ˈtÉ›tÉ™/

Origin

Old English teter.

Full definition of tetter

Noun

1. (now rare) Any of various pustular skin conditions.
• 1621, Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, II.3.2:Angelus Politianus had a tetter in his nose continually running, fulsome in company, yet no man so eloquent and pleasing in his works.
• 1973, Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow:She works at St. Veronica’s hospital, lives nearby at the home of a Mrs. Quoad, a lady widowed long ago and since suffering a series of antiquated diseases—greensickness, tetter, kibes, purples, imposthumes and almonds in the ears, most recently a touch of scurvy.

Verb

1. To affect with tetter.
• 1603, William Shakespeare, , Act 1, Scene 5, 1998, Kathleen O. Irace (editor), The First Quarto of Hamlet, page 50,...And all my smooth body, barked and tettered over.
• 1987, James L Calderwood, Shakespeare & the Denial of Death, page 134,Most deaths are ugly, pathetic events, and Shakespeare must have seen his share of them in bodies tettered by the pox, made noseless by syphilis, or festering blackly from the plague.
• 2009, Adam Thorpe, Hodd, 2010, page 284,I bent down to touch him, for my revulsion had gone, and had been replaced by a great love and sorrow; and thus I wept upon his form, that was cold like a corpse's, its wasted brawn tettered all over with sores and encrustations that were not the botches and whelks of leprosy — though e'en then I would have embraced him, as St Hugh of Lincoln kissed many a leper for the good of his own spirit!