Word of the week

• Hoast n., v. a cough, to cough
• Droukit past participle drenched, soaked.
• Wifie n. a woman.
• SLAP n. a gap in a wall etc.
• HAP v. to cover, to wrap up.
• CREESH n., v. grease
• Kittle v. to tickle, to stimulate; adj. apt, problematic.
• Unco adjective, adverb, noun strange, unfamiliar; extremely; a marvel.
• JAW n. a wave, a rush of water; v. to pour
• Haiver, haver v. To talk fooolishly; n. nonsense, a person who talks nonsense.

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Gate

“Gate”

8th September 2008

Gate

Gate or gait is one of these false friends that can lead the unwary up
the garden gate (not to be confused with the garden yett, the Scots
word for English ‘gate’). In Scots, gate means a way or a road and it
derives from Old Norse ‘gata’. We find it frequently found in Northern
English and Scottish place-names such as Trongate and Canongate. It
is instantly recognisable to fans of Burns from the opening to Tam o
Shanter, in which, as market days draw to a close, ‘folk begin tae tak
the gate’. It makes an earlier poetic appearance in William Dunbar’s
keep Edinburgh tidy poem, taking the merchants of Edinburgh to task
for discouraging tourists: “May nane pas throw 3our principall
gaittis For stink of haddockis and of scaittis”.
Proverbially, according to J. Spence’s Folk-Lore (1899), “Every gait
haes a mire at the end o' it”, but at least you can travel cheerfully
as Sir Walter Scott in Heart of Midlothian (1818) claims that
“Lightsome sangs make merry gate”.
This word provides us with an insight into the complex relationship
between Scots and its sister language, English. Gait survives in
English only in the sense of ‘a manner of walking’ but the gait
spelling, preferred in Older Scots, was rare in English before the
17th century. After the mid 18th century, however, it became fixed as
the English spelling for this restricted sense. The word continued
tae gang its ain gait in Scotland and furthermore was used in the
figurative sense of way or manner as in J. Lauderdale’s Poem of 1796:
“To learn us a' for to retract, Frae our unwordy gaits sae black”. It
even became productive in the formation of compounds such as thusgate,
oniegate and the highly descriptive sungates (clockwise).