Regional Expressions Well Documented

Mardy

"Sulky, moody, or irritable."

A beloved piece of East Midlands dialect, especially associated with Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, describing someone in a sulk or a strop. It likely derives from an older dialectal use of "mard," related to "marred," in the sense of a child spoiled or ruined by over-indulgent treatment, whose sulking became shorthand for the word itself. The word reached a much wider national audience via Sheffield band Arctic Monkeys' 2006 song "Mardy Bum," though the dialect word long predates the song.

Sources: Recorded in Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary; East Midlands regional usage documented in dialect scholarship.

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