"pebbledash" -- WOTY?

[Michael Quinion]

Joel S. Berson wrote

> "All the attention has been quite an upheaval, and she is quite
> tired," Miss [Susan] Boyle's brother, John, told reporters Thursday
> outside her tiny pebbledash cottage in tiny, previously unexciting
> Blackburn, Scotland.
>
> The New York Times, Saturday, April 18, page C1, col. 5.  Sarah
> Lyall, from London, where the interesting words come easier to the pen.
>
> And postdates OED draft rev. Dec. 2009, adj.,  -1991.

"Pebbledash" is the standard term in southern British English for the
external wall covering that you make by spreading mortar on the wall and
then throwing lots of small pebbles at it. The Scots call it harling.


--
Michael Quinion
Editor, World Wide Words
E-mail: wordseditor at worldwidewords.org
Web: http://www.worldwidewords.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org