Word of the week

• darg n. (the result of product of) a day’s work
• braw adj. very good, excellent; handsome; splendid; brave
• scran n. food (scraps); refuse; odds and ends
• earn n. an eagle
• sib adj. related, of the same kindred or lineage; allied with; bound by affection
• Sib is both a Scots and an English word, though it is now more generally associated with Scots and tends to be deliberately archaic when used south of the border. That said, it has remained in use in English in contexts relating to zoology, and other technical terms have been formed from it. In Budgerigars, Canaries & Foreign Finches (1961), R. B. Bennett defines the term sib-bred as: “the young from related birds bred in and in for many years. In-bred”.
• sib adj. related, of the same kindred or lineage; allied with; bound by affection
• sib adj. related, of the same kindred or lineage; allied with; bound by affection
• sib adj. related, of the same kindred or lineage; allied with; bound by affection
• roup n. sale or letting by public auction

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braw adj. very good, excellent; handsome; splendid; brave

“braw adj. very good, excellent; handsome; splendid; brave”

5th May 2008

Braw developed from a variant of the word brave, itself borrowed into Scots and English from French. Early uses of braw, noted in Scottish sources in the seventeenth century, often relate to physical beauty, such as the "cumlie yowth of braw statour (build)" described in A Chronicle of the Kings of Scotland (c 1615). A more proverbial usage is found in Robert Pitcairn’s account of Ancient Criminal Trials in Scotland (1833): "the Devill wold giv us the brawest lyk money that ewer wes coyned". This sense continues to be represented in later literature, as in Sir Walter Scott’s novel, Old Mortality: "Ye think yoursell a braw fellow enow; and troth…there’s na fault to find wi’ the outside". Another of Scott’s novels, Heart of Midlothian (1818), illustrates the use of the plural noun which developed from the same word: "But, Madge, the lads only like ye when ye hae on your braws".

Turning to modern Scots screivin and bletherin, we find the word braw very well represented. It appears in just under ten percent of the documents collected for the Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech at Glasgow University (www.scottishcorpus.co.uk), including a number of transcripts of interviews conducted for the BBC’s Voices project. In one sample, speakers from Inverurie compare their uses of braw, bonny and fine as adjectives for something attractive, and in another, from Glasgow, a speaker notes the frequent use of ‘bonny braw’ for someone who is good-looking. Examples of Scots texts that include the word braw can also be found on the website of the Scottish Parliament. One, entitled Makkin yer voice heard in the Scottish Pairlament, includes the following: "The Visitor Centre has braw visual an interactive displays that lats ye explore information anent the Pairlament at yer ain raik".