scutter, you bald-headed

   This mysterious term occurs in The Country Girls, by Edna O’Brien. ‘Scut’, a slang word for a person, is probably meant, the change to ‘scutter’ in context being caused by the rhyming game the speaker is playing: ‘You bald-headed scutter, will you pass me the butter?’ ‘Scut’ originally referred to the short, erect tail of a hare, rabbit or deer. It was later applied to pubic hair, and thence to a person.

   Shakespeare uses the word only once, and then with what appears to be bawdy intent: ‘Sir John! Art thou there, my deer, my male deer?’ Falstaff replies to this question of Mistress Ford’s with: ‘My doe with the black scut!’ (The Merry Wives of Windsor, 5:v).

   The Philanderer, by Stanley Kauffmann, has an American man who calls a woman ‘you scut, you slut’.