Duane, who lives in New York City, says that his parents who are from the U.S. Virgin Islands use the term corotole to mean “clutter.” This term appears in The Virgin Islands Dictionary by Kareem Nelson-Hull (Bookshop|Amazon). It also appears in the online Crucian Dictionary by Robin Stearns, who spells is corotle. The Dictionary of Jamaican English by Fred Cassidy and R. B. Le Page (Bookshop|Amazon), lists corotos as a term for “stuff, miscellaneous things, or junk” used in Spanish-speaking countries around the Caribbean. Several similar terms with roughly the same meaning are used in English dialects and creoles in the same region, including caroachy, caruchie, and caroco. These words may arise as the result of metathesis, a linguistic process in which sounds swap places in a word, in this case the consonant sounds in clutter trading places with those in corotole. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Corotle, A Virgin Islands Word”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, my name is Dwayne Francis. I’m in New York.
And my question is, what is the meaning of the word coruddle?
Coruddle.
Yes, it’s a word I learned from my parents.
They’re from the USVI, United States Virgin Islands.
And it’s a word that my mother and her siblings would use.
And it would refer to, I’m not so much concerned about the meaning of a book, the origin, that they use it to refer to like clutter.
And I can’t figure out where this word comes from or how it’s properly spelled or if that’s the only significance that it has.
Clutter. Okay. And how would you spell that if you had to spell it?
Well, I guess, and I would say C-A-R-U-T-T-L-E.
That was just guessing, but I can’t find it anywhere.
That’s about right. It does appear in a couple of dictionaries of Virgin Islands language.
There’s one by Kareem Nelson Hull, the Virgin Island Dictionary, and he has an entry for it.
And he calls it a collection of items, seemingly junk, that is placed where it is causing obstruction or making an area unsightly.
And he spells it C-O-R-O-T-O-L-E.
And then there’s another entry on the website of ChristianDictionary.com by Robin Stearns.
She has an entry that’s very similar for that.
And the spelling is C-R-R-O-T-L-E.
I’m missing that last O.
And it’s very similar.
And I have a theory on where that comes from.
And this goes back to a dictionary of Jamaican English published by Fred Cassidy and R.B. LePage.
And in this book, they talk about a word from New World Spanish, carotos, C-A-R-O-T-O-S.
I guess I shouldn’t have trilled that R.
It’s carotos.
And that means stuff, miscellaneous things, or junk.
And it’s used in Puerto Rico and Venezuela and other Spanish-speaking countries around the Caribbean.
Wow.
And there’s also a word in Jamaican and other Caribbean countries that mean junk or miscellaneous things or stuff that are very similar.
Carochi, caruchi, caroco, and tons of different spellings.
They’re all pretty similar.
Not exactly like they’re all missing that L, for example, that are very similar to Carabba.
Wow.
Well, thank you so much.
I would have never made that connection with the Spanish type of thing.
Yeah, because, you know, the Virgin Islands, it’s got all those layers of English.
It’s got, of course, it’s got the English.
It’s got a little bit of Spanish.
It’s got a little bit of French, a little bit of Danish.
It’s got the African heritage.
Duane, I’m wondering about the sense in which you use it.
Is it a really negative sense or is it just kind of mild?
You know, I got a little bit of clutter on my desk.
No, it was used when, like, if mom walked in and the room was in disarray, you were going to hear that word.
Corrottal.
Oh, yes.
Then she’d have a light accent and she’d be like, oh, I can’t work in all this corrottal.
You know, you have to clean all this corrottal up, you know.
Well, who could?
I always loved the Virgin Islands accent.
It always made me feel warm.
There was something home-like about it.
Yes, yes.
Another theory is that there’s just a bit of metathesis here where the consonant sounds in clutter were rearranged to give us coruttle.
So that’s what metathesis means, where sounds swap in a word.
Mm—
Like bird used to be brid and dirt used to be drit.
Exactly.
Yeah, metathesis.
Ooh, okay.
But anyway, that’s the best I have to offer you.
And I appreciate your effort.
Thank you both so much.
Our pleasure.
Thanks for calling.
Thanks for calling.
Take care now.
All righty.
You too.
Bye-bye.
You too.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
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