clabber

• clauber

Shortening of bonny clabber, from Irish bainne clábar (“mud, thick milk for churning”) or a Scots Gaelic cognate thereof; the latter is probably related to láib (“dirt, mud, filth”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈklæb.ə(ɹ)/

  Rhymes: -æbə(ɹ)

clabber (uncountable)

1. Sour or curdled milk.
   • 1997, Charles Frazier, chapter 2, in Cold Mountain, London: Hodder and Stoughton, page 25:

     Even butter had proved beyond her means, for the milk she had tried to churn had never firmed up beyond the consistency of runny clabber.

1. Wet clay or mud.

• bonnyclabber

clabber (third-person singular simple present clabbers, present participle clabbering, simple past and past participle clabbered)

1. To sour or curdle.
   • 2013, Philipp Meyer, The Son, Simon & Schuster, published 2014, page 148:

     They always had more milk than they needed and often entire buckets would clabber and one of her brothers would carry it out to the bunkhouse for the vaqueros.

• cabbler, crabble