The Scottish National Dictionary (SND) defines the above as: “fine; smart used to describe something very good of its type”. The first recorded mention in SND is from the Roxburghshire Word-book: “A barrie gadjee [fellow]” (1923) and it states that it's borrowed from the Gipsy dialect of Kirk Yetholm.

That this is originally a gipsy word is in no doubt but wider research has ante-dated this in Scotland to the late nineteenth century. Walter Simson, who published his father's collected work on Scotland's gipsies' language found it to be attested by twelve of his informants (A History opf the Gipsies, with Specimens of the Gipsy Lanuage 1865. Facsimile by Elibron Classics 2007). In the early twentieth century Andrew McCormick in his Tinkler-Gipsies of Galloway even conversed with gipsies in their own language: “As I passed I said, “Barrie davies, nawken” (Good day. Tinkler),…”, although he does not record the ‘Tinkler's' response.

Quite when this passed in to general Scots speech is unclear. The earliest example of use by a non-gipsy is from Duncan Maclean in his short story Pig Squealing published in New Writing Scotland 10 (1992): “Well, you wouldn't've been taking the morning off college to look after your wee baby sister and we wouldn't've met ever. And we wouldn't be sitting here now getting on barrie.”

The ultimate etymology is unclear, but Heinrich Morritz Gottlieb Grellman writing in his Dissertation on the Gipsies records a similar word ‘Baro' meaning ‘great' (1787) and he suggests a ‘Hindostan' root.

Scots Word of the Week is written by Pauline Cairns Speitel of Scottish Language Dictionaries