Word of the week

• ding v. knock, strike; batter, beat down; defeat
• ettle v. intend, plan, purpose to do; try, make an attempt at
• sleekit adj. smooth in manner, plausible; sly, cunning
• synd, syne v. rinse, wash (out)

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ding v. knock, strike; batter, beat down; defeat

“ding v. knock, strike; batter, beat down; defeat ”

25th February 2008

Ding is thought to be derived from Old Norse dengja, to hammer, and is found in some of the very oldest Scottish literature. In a battle scene in John Barbour’s epic poem, The Bruce (1375), "The Scottis men dang on so fast … As ilk man war a campioun", and in his Book of the Law of Arms (1456), Gilbert Hay criticises fathers who "could nocht fynd in thair hertis to dyng na chasty (chastise) thair barnis". Some may have escaped punishment, but there are a number of medieval references to bairns being "dung (hit) with wandis (switches)".

More recent literary examples range from the obvious to the downright peculiar. According to J. B. Philip’s Weelumm o’ the Manse (1929), hedgehogs will "rin up an epple tree, ding in their birse (bristles) and cairry aff a hail backbirn o’ epples". Ding often occurs in the phrase ding doon, as illustrated by the self-effacing David in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Catriona (1893): "I thought myself … a dull, stockish character … very unfit to come into a young maid’s life, and perhaps ding down her gaiety".

A related word that has yet to make it into our dictionaries is dingie, which sounds like dinghy rather than dingy, and is a rare visitor to printed sources. >From what we can gather from local informants and oral sources, the word usually means snub, ignore or disregard, and is most often used to describe social situations in which someone is deliberately cold-shouldered. An example might be "he pure dingied me ootside the pictures oan Friday night". We are looking for further quotations, so please get in touch if you see this word in print.