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• neb n. a person’s nose; the beak of a bird; a projecting point or tip
• slitter v. work or eat messily, splash about; smear or stain (with something)
• hirple v. hobble, limp, walk unsteadily; move unevenly
• feeze v. twist, cause to revolve; wriggle, wag; ingratiate oneself (with someone)

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plot v. scald with or immerse in boiling water; overheat, burn, scorch

“plot v. scald with or immerse in boiling water; overheat, burn, scorch”

14th July 2008

plot

Plot first appears on record in an early seventeenth-century text, in the phrase "he now for his pride plotted with Pluto in the flame of hel". In the eighteenth century, it crops up again in Allan Ramsay’s poetic Dedication to Ilka Lovely British Lass (1724): "while the Tea’s fill’d reeking round, Rather than plot a tender Tongue, Treat a’ the circling Lugs wi’ Sound, Syne safely sip when ye have sung". And recently, in Sheena Blackhall’s The Bonsai Grower (1998): "the fowk o the fairm cam hame ferfochen ilkie nicht, worn oot bi lang days in the parks … teemin oot the bales o strae ower the grun fur the hairsters tae bigg thegither like hooses, dryin aneth the birsslin hett o the plottin sun".

As local newspaper, the Arbroath Guide, noted in 1891, the word can apply to fowk theirsels in such expressions as "I’m just plottin’ o’ heat". Demonstrating the usefulness of local papers for harvesting Scots data, the Dundee Courier picked up a further example in 1961: "I was ‘plottin’’ before I reached the top". According to the Dictionary of the Scots Language, tea was formerly known to some Aberdonians as plot-gut, and plottit butter was produced when churned butter overheated and became granular and lumpy.

Plot is also recorded with the sense "remove the wool from skins by steeping them in a hot alkaline solution" from the late seventeenth century. Sir Walter Scott recalls this process when he writes in one of his letters (1816): "The degradation of genius seems to give as little pain to vulgar minds as plotting a bird does to a cook". The origin of plot is uncertain, though it may be related to another Scots word, ploat, which means "pluck, remove feathers or wool", and is derived from Dutch ploten.