A pawkie is defined in the Dictionary of the Scots Language (www.dsl.ac.uk) as “A glove or mitten having one compartment only for all the fingers and one for the thumb” and, as a child, I had pawkies strung on a thread through my coat so that they would not be lost. The first instance of the word is from Lanark in 1822. In 2001 in the Borders pawkies are recorded as ‘mittens’ in a Glossary of Scots Words and Farming Terms. The final example in the DSL come from Edinburgh in 2003: “In the winter pawkies keep yer hands warmer.” 

It is not clear from the record if pawkie meaning everything from: “Wily, sly, cunning, crafty” (first noted in 1782) or “shrewd, astute, sagacious, ‘sharp’, having one’s wits about one, resourceful, ‘hard-headed’” (Ulster in 1929) are connected to the glove meaning at all. 

The etymologies of both meanings are obscure. DSL suggests that the gloves are from children’s language while the Oxford English Dictionary suggests that the adjective is a derivative of ‘pawk’ with a ‘y’ suffix. The definition of ‘pawk’ is as follows: “Scots. A trick, an artifice, a cunning device. Obsolete”. OED originally said that the etymology was unknown but in their revised edition of September 2005 they suggest a Scandinavian source (A. Liberman Ten Scand. & North English Etymologies in Alvíssmál (1996)).

So, again, as with many Scots words we don’t have any firm evidence. However, I personally, think they are connected one to the other but which came first? According to our evidence it would seem to be the adjective.

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