tholtan

English

Etymology

From Manx tholtan. Compare tolltach (“full of holes”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /toʊltən/

Noun

tholtan (plural tholtans)

1. (chiefly Isle of Man) An abandoned house; a ruin of a building which was once a home.
   • 1981, The Times Reports of Debates in the Manx Legislature, volume 98, page T-905:

     You can be sitting in a tholtan down in back Castle Street in Peel in a bit of property that is not fit to live in, but it will still be rated at about £55. So the whole system, really, is wrong.

   • 1995 July–August, Ancestry Magazine, volume 13, number 4:

     Throughout the Isle, abandoned tholtans, devoid of their thatched roofs and whitewash, are silent reminders of the people who once were sheltered near the warmth of their hearths and sang in their own Celtic tongue.

   • 1997, Vivien Allen, Hall Caine: Portrait of a Victorian Romancer, page 25:

     Near the schoolhouse was a tholtan, a tiny, half-ruined cottage with sagging thatch and the door off its hinges.

Manx

Noun

tholtan

1. a ruin of a house