View site in Scots

Scots Language Centre Centre for the Scots Leid

WERSH, adj. insipid, feeble

The first example of wersh in the Dictionary of the Scots Language (www.dsl.ac.uk) is from Henryson’s The Tale of Orpheus and Erudices his Quene (a1500): “Erudices … Rycht warsch and wan and walowit [withered, faded] as the wede”, where it meant sickly-looking. 

Later, it was often used of food or drink, meaning insipid or tasteless, as in this from Stewart A Robertson’s With Double Tongue (1928): “But water’s wersh when ye’re drouthy for yill [ale]”.  More specifically, it meant lacking in salt, as in the Hawick News (1972): “Next to the dislike for lumpy porridge was that of wairsh porridge”.  

Extending the meaning beyond food, it is stated in W L Watson’s Sir Sergeant (1899) that: “A half-done deed and a half-boiled egg are wersh things”, and in Scott’s Old Mortality (1816): “The Worcester man was but wersh parritch, neither gude to fry, boil, nor sup cauld”.  

Wersh was also used to refer to a variety of things that could be insipid, dull or otherwise lacking sparkle.  Of language, it meant tame and uninspiring, as in this from R M Fergusson’s A Village Poet (1897)“The jokes which tickle the palates o’ the Southerners are gey wersh”.  Referring to music, it meant flat or thin, as in “Their tone though sweetish, is wersh, like the tone o’ the floot” from John Wilson’s Noctes Ambrosianae (in Blackwood’s Magazine, 1826).

In more modern usage, wersh is also used to mean sour or bitter, as in Hugh MacDiarmid’s Sangschaw (1925): “Wersh is the vinegar. And the sword is sharp”.  Applied to weather, it means raw, cold or damp: in S R Crockett’s The Raiders (1894) we read that “The yellow mist had a wersh unkindly feel about it.”

However, in the opinion of the Glasgow Herald in 1948, “Wersh as a synonym for bitter is a turgid usage”.

 

 

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.