Potatoes simply became taters as the vowel sounds at the beginning were lost. This is to do with how the unstressed vowel sounds at the beginning of a word are lost over time. This is an example of what’s called aphetic pronunciation. “We’d better use up those taters soon,” for example.
It’s a general slang term that isn’t necessarily tied to any particular area, although you’ll certainly hear it more in some places than in others.īut, again, it will be understood by just about everyone in Britain to mean potato. “Tatties” may be more Scottish, but “taters” is one you’ll hear throughout Britain. It probably predates this by some time in the spoken vernacular. It’s not entirely clear when the term first started being used, but we have it attested in the written record from around the late 18 th Century. The word itself is a simple alteration of the word potato.
“Let’s have haggis and tatties for tea tonight,” for example. One such favorite is called “mince and tatties”, comprising minced beef and typically mashed potatoes. “Tatties” is often the word used when describing a particular meal that includes potatoes. Next, we have tatties, which, while used throughout Britain, is primarily a piece of Scottish slang. Of course, potatoes didn’t reach British shores until the end of the 16 th Century, so it must have been some time after this. Later on in the century it came to mean a digging implement and ultimately a potato. It is a very old one, having been in use by at least the 1440s.Īt first it meant a short dagger or knife, potentially coming from the Old Norse spjot meaning spear. It’s not completely clear where this term originated. It could refer to any kind of potato, for example, “roasted spuds” or “mashed spud”. “Can you go and pick up some spuds from the shop?” for example. The term spud is used up and down the British Isles, and it’s unlikely you’ll meet anyone who doesn’t know what the slang term refers to. First we have what is perhaps the single most common slang term for potato in Britain: spud.
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