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Learning in Literature

pruch n. goods or benefits received at work in addition to pay, perquisites

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“pruch n. goods or benefits received at work in addition to pay, perquisites”

7th August 2007

Pruch is not known throughout the whole of Scotland, and our evidence suggests that it may be restricted to Ayrshire. From the quotations provided in the Dictionary of the Scots Language, it is clear that pruch has been in use since at least the 1950s. One of the examples was recorded by a local "informant", or dictionary spy, who reported that a woman in Crosshill, in Ayrshire, made the following statement about farm-workers wages in 1954: "They're no very big, but there's plenty o pruch." From this we are no doubt to infer that the job had interesting and worthwhile perks.
In origin, the word pruch has developed from variants (spraich, sprach, etc) of the word spreath, which has a range of meanings that include booty, plunder, stolen cattle and driftwood. This word can be traced back to the earliest Scots literature in the fourteenth century, and is itself derived from Scottish Gaelic spreidh, "cattle". But it seems that spreath may no longer be in use -- our quotation evidence indicates that it was rare by the early twentieth century.
I first encountered pruch when my family unexpectedly inherited an item of furniture, which resided somewhat obstructively in the hall until a new home was found for it. My father's cousin had referred to items acquired by this method as "pruch", and during its rather awkward and obstacular period of transition, we began to refer to as "the pruch". Anecdotes aside, though, pruch does seem to be capable of designating a wide variety of good acquired by various means. Our evidence is patchy though, so we would be very interested to know more about its current uses. Please contact us if you have any written evidence for it, if you are aware of other meanings not discussed here, or if you know of its use outside Ayrshire.