Etymology question (non-spanking)

I have a question, unrelated to spanking, for LSF members who live in the U.K. or Ireland. As many of you are excellent writers, you are likely also keen students of the English language. Maybe you can provide an answer.

I grew up in an isolated area of the Southern Appalachians. Essentially all who lived there, i included, are descended from immigrants from England, Scotland, and Ireland, with a bit of Scandinavian DNA for good measure.

Owing to its isolation, the dialect of this region has been said to retain much English English compared to American English on the whole. My question regards the origin of words and phrases that I heard my father use many decades ago when I was growing up.

He used the word "scutter" to describe a person who was no-account, one who might break the law. I see from searching the internet that the word "scut," of Irish origin, means about the same. However, "scut" was apparently not recorded before the late 1800s, long after my ancestors came to America. Has anyone on the other side of the pond heard the word "scutter" used as my father used it?

He also used the phrase "whup (whip) it to your hull" in the context of urging one to eat heartily, as there was plenty of food for all on the table. Knowing my father, he might have made up that phrase. But has anyone in Ireland or the British Isles ever heard that phrase or something similar?

Scutter means a "sofa loafer", can't think where I have heard the word before but it was fairly recently not when I was young. My grandmother often used the phrase "ne'er-do-well" when referring to those who lacked the work ethic.

In Northern Ireland we would still use 'drunken scut' in exactly the way your father used scutter. I have never heard anyone described as a scutter though. Skitter is a word used to describe a badly behaved child, my mother's favourite description of her children was 'you're a cheeky impudent skitter of hells blazes'

Thanks, blimp & HermioneJean - it seem my father was using a word that originated somewhere in your part of the world and lived on in the Southern Appalachians. I've never heard the word used in any other region of the US where I've lived.

The word "hull" can mean skin or covering - have you ever heard of it, perhaps as an archaic term, meaning one's body?

Hi Cal,
What immediately popped into my mind in regard to "hull" was the bottom of a ship or boat....hmmm, funny how my mind would think of a bottom...so in the context that your dad was using the term maybe he meant to eat so much that, to put it crudely, it would fill one's whole digestive tract.

No, I've never heard the word 'hull' used in that context. Hope someone else can help you with it.

Never heard "scutter" used. However, a common word for a lazy, irresponsible person in the rural South is "trifling."

SpankedJenny - yes, I hadn't thought of it quite that way, but perhaps "whup it to your hull" was an analogy to filling the hull of a boat or ship, but with food rather than cargo. Again, he could have made it up.
Redskinluver - a bit off the subject, but those who settled the region where I grew up came there from the north - Delaware, Pennsylvania, the western part of Virginia. Some came because they served in the War of 1812. In return they were given land in the Southern Appalachians because the government had no money to pay them.
I later briefly lived in the "Deep South" and was surprised that the accents and dialect there were so different from where I grew up, only a couple of hundred miles away.

The word "scut" is used in the spy novel I am reading at the moment a "scut job" meaning I suppose a dirty job. Now you mention it Cal the word will turn up everywhere.

Here in the US of A I have occasionally heard the term "scut work" in the same sense that my friend blimp describes, meaning a dirty job. I suppose that people who do such jobs could be perceived (rightly or wrongly) as now accounts who might be law breakers, leading to that meaning for the word scutter.