flit v. remove (one’s household, etc) to another house, go elsewhere

Flit, in the above senses, was once in widespread use in England as well as Scotland, but in the last few hundred years it has been more frequently used north of the border. Derived from the Old Norse verb flytja, the word is found in Scots sources from the Middle Ages onwards. Although we would now associate flittin with moving house, the word has also been used in reference to other forms of removal or transport. In the late sixteenth century, for example, the revenue accounts for Edinburgh’s Dean of Guild Court records a payment to “twa warkmen for ... flitting the skaffald … out of the kirk”. Another form of departure is noted in A Compendious Book of Godly and Spiritual Songs (1567): “And for thair fault till hell sune sall thay flit”. That said, flit has also been used to indicate the movement of a household for several hundred years. A volume produced by the Spalding Club records a seventeenth-century memorandum: “The Marquess … leaves directioun to his seruandis to flit and remove thame selfis, goodis, and geir efter him to Strathbogie”. Slightly later, the Fintray Court Book notes that “Every tennent ... whether he be to sit or flitt, shall labour no more but the two third parts of his burnt land and laigh (low) land”. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the traditional date on which farm-workers changed their employment became known as Flit Friday. The word is no stranger to Ulster Scots, as a 2003 article from the Belfast Telegraph attests: “Dr Reid, who led a study of 200 patients in the hospital’s surgical wards, said that 15% of patients who declined to check out on Saturday cited the old wives’ tale — ‘Saturday’s Flit is a Short Sit’ — as their reason”.

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