Scots Language Centre

COUTHIE adj sociable, comfortable,

20 hours, 16 minutes ago

Couthie is related to ‘uncouth’ and ‘unco’ in that their common origin lies in Old English ‘cuth’ (known). From there, the meaning of couthie expands to inclu...

PERQUEER adv by heart, word for word; clearly.

1 week, 1 day ago

Once widespread, this  word may now have slipped out of use. It comes from Old French ‘par queur’, which translates directly into English as ‘by heart’. We find it u...

SWEIR adj reluctant

2 weeks ago

Sweir covers a range of senses including slothful, inactive or unwilling to make an effort. People have not changed much since 1490, when John Irland wrote in  the Miroure of Wyssdome: &ldq...

HAUGH n a piece of level ground

3 weeks, 1 day ago

Haugh, sometimes spelt hauch, also appears in Older Scots as halch. It usually rhymes with loch, but in some dialects the final consonant may disappear. It is a piece of level ground,...

INCH n island

1 month, 1 day ago

Inch comes from the Gaelic innes and is familiar to us in place-names.
We find it as such as early as 1198-9 in the Latin of the Lindores Charter: “totam insulam que vocatur Redinche...

BRAT n apron, rags

on 08th Feb 2010

Brat used to be a common word but is now rarely heard. It comes from an Old Northumbrian loanword of Celtic origins meaning a cloak. Robert Henryson at the end of the fifteenth century used it t...

MIDDEN n dunghill, refuse heap

on 03rd Feb 2010

This word comes from Old Norse. We can reconstruct the probable form ‘myki-dyngja’. Quotations in the Dictionary of the Scots Language show contrasting pictures of rural and urban mi...

WEAN n child

on 24th Jan 2010

The last two weeks have featured words now associated with the North East, although they once had a much wider currency. This week, we look at a word which many people associate with Glasgow. Gl...