A common usage of the verb funk relates to horses, where it means to kick or throw up the legs.  Examples in the Dictionary of the Scots Language (www.dsl.ac.uk) include this from Poems by Peter Forbes (1812): “The taylor had an awkward beast, It funket first an’ syne did reest”, and this from David M Moir’s The Life of Mansie Waugh (1898): “Up and down philandered the beast on its hind-legs and its fore-legs, funking like mad”.

An animal prone to such behaviour is a funker, as in this example from John Jamieson’s An Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language (1825): “Dinna buy that beast. She’s a funker”. 

People indulge in funking as well, both physically , as in James Lumsden’s The Battles of Dunbar and Prestonpans (1896): “I’ll funk his buttock weel some day!”, and figuratively, as in John Halliday’s The Rustic Bard (1847): “’Gainst the freaks o’ oor fate as weel we may funk”.

Funk could also mean to throw violently and abruptly, to pitch or fling.  So in Swatches o’ Hamespun (1924) we read that “He-cats an’ midnicht stravaigers geyan af’en gets beets fungt at them”, and the yet more colourful: “Ye witches, warlocks, fairies, fien’s! Daft fungin fiery peats, an’ stanes”, from Poems by William Tarras (1804).

Finally, the children’s game ‘funk, cuddies, funk’ is explained in this 1950 quotation from West Lothian: “…a boy stands with his back against a wall and the others on his side stoop with bent backs in a line from him backwards. Another player then leaps on the bent backs trying to reach the boy at the wall who calls “Funk, cuddies, funk,” when the whole line begins to heave and twist to unseat the rider. If they are successful, he joins the line and releases another to become rider.”

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