smeddum

• smitham, smithum, smiddum

From earlier smitham, smytham, from Middle English smedma, from Old English smedma, smeodema, smedema (“fine flour, pollen meal, meal”).

smeddum (uncountable)

1. Fine powder; flour.
2. The powder or finest part of ground malt.
3. (mining) Smitham.
4. (Scotland) Zest, energy; pluck; sagacity; quickness of apprehension; gumption; spirit; mettle.
   • 1919, Lucy Maud Montgomery, chapter XVI, in Rainbow Valley‎:

     “Don’t like the name, don’t like it. There’s no smeddum to it. Besides, it makes me think of my Aunt Jinny. She called her three girls Faith, Hope, and Charity. Faith didn’t believe in anything—Hope was a born pessimist—and Charity was a miser. […] ”

   • 1933, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Cloud Howe (A Scots Quair), Polygon, published 2006, page 271:

     maybe there were better folk far in Segget, but few enough with smeddum like his.

5. (UK dialectal, Northern England) Ore small enough to pass through the wire bottom of a sieve.
6. (UK dialectal, Northern England) A layer of clay or shale between two beds of coal.

• smiddum-tails

From Old English smeodoma.

• IPA^(key): /ˈsmɛdəm/

smeddum (uncountable)

1. (obsolete) fine powder, smitham
2. pith, essence
3. zest, spirit, gumption
   • 1925, Hugh MacDiarmid, Cophetua:

     She's showin' the haill coort/ the smeddum intil her!

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)