Definition of "netty"

How prettie, how fine and how nettie,Good huswife should yettie.

1573, Thomas Tusser, “Points of Huswifrie”, in Fiue Hundreth Points of Good Husbandry

Ye ought for to keepe them close, till the day haue taken the gellie or netty rime, from the earth.

1587, Leonard Mascall, The Booke of Cattell: Sheep, page 214

Neddy, Netty, a certain place that will not bear a written explanation, but which is depicted to the very life in a tail-piece in the first edition of Bewick's ‘Land Birds’ (1797), p. 285.

1825, John Trotter Brockett, Glossary of North Country Words:

A line of pit cottages... tiny back gardens with outside lavatories, ‘netties’, some of them emptied twice a week by the council.

1978, John Lewis, chapter III, in Uncertain Sound, page 75

Our toilet was an outside netty shared between two or three families, where you sat on a hole and hoped the cat wouldn't jump at your backside.

1992 May 4, The Independent, page 13

Netty, a privy or water-closet... A common name, amongst the working classes... In common use. In my recollection it was looked upon as a euphemism.

1903, English Dialect Dictionary, volume IV, page 255