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Glite Dictionary
🧣 A healing cloth 🍮 A Scottish dessert
clootie

clootie

9.9
A piece of cloth tied to a tree or left at a well to ask for healing
  • noun
  • /ˈkluːti/
  • Literature
translation icon : trapo
  • During the festival, many visitors left colorful clooties near the holy spring as a sign of hope.

Examples

  • Clark, who is also of Scottish heritage, found that people in the Highlands of Scotland visited sacred healing wells, called clootie wells, where they washed their bodies with cloth and then hung the cloth in a nearby tree.

    Academic text (2006)

  • At the clootie well, locals tie pieces of cloth to the trees as offerings for healing.

  • In Scotland, it is customary to hang a clootie on a tree when seeking good health.

Surface Forms

clootie singular
clooties plural

Morphology

clootie = cloot (semi-transparent) = cloot + ie

The word is formed from the Scots base 'cloot' plus the diminutive suffix '-ie', but the folk-offering sense is culturally specific and not fully predictable for a general English learner.

Etymology

Clootie comes from an old Scots word cloot meaning 'cloth' or 'rag', so a clootie left at a holy well is literally a piece of cloth tied to a tree as an offering or healing charm.