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SHAUCHLE v. to shuffle or shamble

Defined in the Dictionary of the Scots Language (www.dsl.ac.uk) as “to walk without lifting the feet, to shuffle, shamble, walk in an ungainly, heavy-footed manner”, the earliest example of shauchle in the dictionary dates from 1721: “Had you such a Shoe on every Foot, you would shochel” (James Kelly, A Complete Collection of Scottish Proverbs).  

A word whose sound resembles that of the action it describes, shauchle conjures up an immediate impression of feet scuffing along in loose or ill-fitting shoes, in quotations such as this from John Mackay Wilson’s Historical, Traditionary and Imaginative Tales of the Borders (1835): “Dinna let yer shoon be shaughlin aff yer feet in that gaet [road]; or this from J B Salmond’s My Man Sandy (1894): “Sandy gaed shauchlin’ oot at the door”.

Shauchle also lends itself to various compounds, such as shauchlie-fittit, meaning shambling, and shauchlie-bowlie, shauchlie-leggit, and shauchlie-shanked - all meaning bandy-legged.  It can also be used figuratively, as in “An ungainly flat-bottomed boat shauchling drunkenly on a heavy swell” from The Scots Magazine (1970), or “When the shadows are shauchlin’, black an’ blin’, from Margaret W Simpson’s Day’s End (1929). 

As an adjective, shauchlin can be applied to people, animals or their gait, where it means “unsteady or weak on one’s feet, shambling, shuffling, knock-kneed, wearing worn-out shoes”; or to articles, when it means rickety or shoogly.  So we read of “Yon poor shaughlin’ in-kneed bit scray!” from John Gibson Lockhart’s Reginald Dalton (1823) and “A shauchlin’ wheeled perambulator” from J L Waugh’s Cute McCheyne (1917).  

As a noun, a shauchle is an old worn-out shoe or slipper; anything dilapidated or ramshackle;  or a stunted or undergrown person.  Thus William Buchanan in Glimpses of Olden Days in Aberdeen (1870) refers to “A sad shachle o’ a creatur, wi’ legs like a mavis”.

 

 

Scots Word of the Week is written by Ann Ferguson of Scottish Language Dictionaries www.scotsdictionaries.org.uk, 25 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LN (0131) 650 4149 mail@scotsdictionaries.org.uk. For £20 you can sponsor a Scots word.