Water is said to be lipperin when it ripples, or is ruffled by tide or wind, or breaks in small waves. In the Dictionary of the Scots Language we find an early example quoted from Gavin Douglas's translation of Virgil's Aeneid (Eneados): “…the lippyrrand wallys quhyte War pulderit full of fomy froith” (1513), and George Johnston in The Botany of the Eastern Borders (1853) describes  “A little burn, with scarce audible noise” which “runs lippering in the bottom”.

As a noun, a lipper is a ripple or a broken or choppy sea, as in this quotation from Caithness: “Of the sea on a calm day: there was hardly a lipper” (1959) or this, over 400 years earlier, again from Douglas's Eneados: “Lyke as the sey changis first hys hew In quhite lippiris by the wyndis blast” (1513).

Lipper can also mean to brim over or be full to overflowing, and not necessarily with liquid.  Thus we read of boxes overflowing with fish in the Shetland News (1900): “Da gutters awa' at Baltasund left da cran boxe … lipprin' wi' herrin”; a basket filled with peat in Thomas Manson's Humours of a Peat Commission (1918): “Is da kishie filled, haeped an runnin ower, … or is da paets just lipperin?”; or a person brimming over with goodwill in Donald Campbell's Bamboozled (1932): “I cam' toddlin' doon here lipperin' tae the brim tae wush abodie happiness for anither year”. On a similarly cheery note, the New Shetlander refers to someone “lipperin ower wi fun” (1948).

In a more perilous vein, a lipperin boat is one which is sunk to the water level so that it is almost awash.  W H Maxwell in Sports and Adventures in the Highlands (1844) refers to a boat “…being sunk…so far as just to lipper with the water”. 

Scots Word of the Week is written by Ann Ferguson of Scottish Language Dictionaries