Clamjamfry

June 2nd, 2009 by admin

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Posted in columns, June 2009 | 9 comments

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9 comments on this post.

  1. Marcus Evans:

    June 10th, 2009 at 8:56 am

    In common usage in the UK?
    I don’t think so!

  2. Victor:

    September 27th, 2010 at 4:22 pm

    And here all along I thought it was an occasion where clams are fried in jam… Oh well

  3. Melissa:

    January 7th, 2011 at 7:38 pm

    I found it in an old Merriam Webster dictionary that I frequently use to look up odd words. It has become one of my favorite words, and I once used it as the name of my website.

  4. Erica:

    April 19th, 2012 at 6:06 pm

    I saw this word, while looking up things online to help me compose a poem. I recognized it and remembered I had come across the word a very long time ago. I knew what it meant.

    I just used it in a poem to hopefully stump a fellow poet who uses many words in his poetry that force me to do Google searches. I hope I’ve finally one-upped him!

  5. Phil:

    June 4th, 2012 at 6:49 am

    I’d forgotten that Lewis Grassic Gibbon uses it quite often in “Sunset Song” but that is being remedied with my first read through of that classic in some 20 years. Gibbon takes the usage further and applies it to appearances as well as people or situations in general, “a woman with her face all clamjamfried with paint and powder and dirt,” leaves nothing to the reader’s imagination!

  6. Jumphry:

    August 16th, 2012 at 8:54 am

    “common usage” isn’t what is meant by “very much in use”, which is what the article claims. Common usage would be quite another thing entirely.

  7. john begg:

    March 8th, 2013 at 12:32 am

    I use “Clamjafry” from time to time, especially when talking to other Scots, as a slightly derogatory word for a group of people. My grandfather (born in 1880s) also used it and I guess I got it from him.

    On a similar tack, what is the correct definition and derivation of “Hooching” as in “the marketplace was fair hooching with folk” (Very crowded with people)? Dictionaries only seem to give “hooch=illicit booze” which is not the same word.

  8. john begg:

    March 8th, 2013 at 12:36 am

    Also I think I have seen clamjafry in R L Stevenson, but I can’t remember where? Maybe in “Catriona” when David Balfour is talking to the McGregor Lawyer?

  9. john begg:

    March 9th, 2013 at 4:59 am

    Yes, it was – ““The Advocate be dammed!” cries he. “It’s the Campbells, man! You’ll have the whole clanjamfry of them on your back; and so will the Advocate too, poor body” From Catriona by RL Stevenson, David Balfour talking to Charles Stewart, Writer (to the signet = Scottish solicitor). If it is correct that it dates from early C19, then RLS has committed a rare anachronism, as Cationa is set in 1751!

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