Word of the week

• swither v. be uncertain about what to do or choose, doubt, hesitate, dither
• peevers n. the game of hopscotch
• breenge n. a violent or clumsy rush, a dash, a plunge
• airt n. point of the compass, direction; way, manner
• cundy n. a covered drain, the entrance to a drain; a tunnel, passage

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peevers n. the game of hopscotch

“peevers n. the game of hopscotch”

23rd July 2007

Peevers (or peever) is known by a variety of different names, including pallalls and beds, though this term also refers to the numbered spaces chalked on the ground, used in playing the game. And as the Herald reported in February 2004, such games can do more than keep elements of traditional culture alive: "In an effort to combat childhood obesity ... the medical charity Chest, Heart and Stroke Scotland is going back to the past and teaching the finer points of peevers".
Peever is also the term used for the stone itself, and this is the sense of the word in our earliest quotation evidence, which dates from the mid-nineteenth century. John Strang's account of Glasgow and its Clubs (1856), for example, explains that: "The young misses indulged in scoring the flagstones with their peevors, for the purpose of playing at pal-lall". The word's origins are unclear, though probably connected to the use of "peever", a small marble, documented from the mid-nineteenth century. In later use the game itself often took on the name of the stone, as in following extract from Neil Munro's Erchie (1904): "She canna hae mony wee lassies like hersel' to play the peever wi'".
Many of our records of the word relate to nostalgic memories of childhood games. In History on your Doorstep, The Reminiscences of the Ferguslie Elderly Forum (1993), one participant recalled: "When I was a child in Port Glasgow the neighbours was out playing with the children, peever beds and everything, even the hoops, and piries; everybody joined in". By modern standards, the temporary graffiti caused by such games seems a small price to pay for a little healthy fun, but in 1921 the Edinburgh Evening News took a sterner view of the miscreants "Chalking and disfiguring the street playing 'peevers'". Caw canny - ye micht be a stane's thraw awa fae an ASBO