Dorty is connected to dort, to sulk, or the sulks, as in the phrase to take the dorts, meaning to take the huff.  Early examples in the Dictionary of the Scots Language (www.dsl.ac.uk) date from the late 16th-early 17th centuries, and the sense ‘unwilling’ is illustrated by the following, from a sonnet by Alexander Mongomerie:  “I … am right dortie to come ouir the dur, For thame that by my kyndnes no-thing settis” (a1605).

Later, there are examples meaning haughty or supercilious, as in this from James Ballantyne’s Poems (1856): “The City Guard sae proud an’ dorty, Brave remnant o’ the twa-and-forty”, and this from James Hogg’s Perils of Man (1822): “With him rode … the dorty Dunbars”.  

More commonly, it was used in the sense of saucy or pettish, usually of women.  According to Jamieson’s Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language (1808) dorty was “often applied to a young woman who is saucy in her conduct to her suitors, and not easily pleased in the choice of a husband”.  In Alexander Ross’s Helenore (1768) he describes someone thus: “As drum [cool, indifferent] an’ dorty, as young miss wad be To country Jock, that needs wad hae a kiss”.

S R Crockett in The Grey Man (1896) uses dorty meaning fastidious: “My… appetite, which she called ‘dainty and dorty.’”  And meaning feeble, delicate or sickly, it was used of animals or plants, as in “Your carrots are dorty” (from Country Clash by Ida Bell (1914), and also of people: “He’s a doorty wean” — a delicate child” from The Scotsman (c1860).

Continuing the theme of reluctance to thrive, dorty can also be used of weather where rain is holding off, as in “The rain’s dortie” (Angus, 1949), or “The weather is verra dortie” from the Transactions of the Scottish Dialects Committee (1916). 

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.