So after recently moving from my hometown in Yorkshire to London for work reasons, I realised that A LOT of Londoners have no clue what mardy means; some of them haven’t even heard of the word apart from ‘that one artic monkeys song’.

This shocked me... While growing up in the North I would use mardy often, and so did so many others who I grew up with, that I naturally assumed the word to be known nationwide and even exist in a dictionary.

But boy was I shocked to find out this word isn’t actually as common as I thought. Whenever I was living in the north you’d never really hear someone use the word ‘grumpy’ as a substitute for mardy.

Anyways, I want to know how well known this word is from regional perspectives - my partner is from Nottingham and they use this word frequently - does it exist in the west midlands as well? What about the Geordies or Scots, have you guys come across this word?

EDIT: Wow, I did not expect this to blow up so much! Initially I tried to reply to you all but as you can probably appreciate that is somewhat impractical now 😂 Thank you regardless to everyone who chipped in!

  • After scanning through the comments, it definitely seems as though ‘Mardy/Mardi’ as I have used/know it, is predominantly associated with the Nottinghamshire, South Yorkshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire and Derbyshire regions. So perhaps mardy is more a upper-north [East] Midlands/South Yorkshire slang rather than the north as a whole.

Other comments suggest it extends beyond these areas, seemingly as far south as the West Midlands all the way north into the North West + a mention of it being used a lot in the Liverpool area; albeit these regions seem to have a more patchy association as some people claim they know of it but it’s use isn’t that common, while others from the same place don’t seem to recognise it whatsoever.

The rough line where it’s use ceases to exist is around Cumbria/County Durham/Northumbria in the north, with the Scots having absolutely no clue and the SE England, London, amongst many other areas in the general South also not being familiar with it. Some Welshmen from North Wales claim they know and rarely use it, but it remains unheard of in other parts of Wales. Surprisingly, some people from Northern Ireland noted what Mardy means, but they seem to use ‘crabbit’ as their alternative.

The rest of Yorkshire seems to have a loose use of it, as there are many other variations of mardy, such as ‘maungy’. Manchester is similar in this regard, with most Mancs claiming a truncated equivalent being ‘Mard’ or ‘Mardarse’.

I’ll keep checking the comments over the next few days to see if I’ve missed any obvious trends. Till then, have a great day mardyarses!