Scots Language Centre

BIRL v, n spin, whirl

2 days, 21 hours ago

The first unequivocal quotation with birl in the sense of spin appears in 1790 in David Morison Poems “The temper pin she gi’es a tirl, An’ spins but slow, yet seems to birl&rd...

FECK n a large number, a majority

1 week, 3 days ago

A fair feck o folk use this word to mean ‘a large number’ but its earlier meaning of ‘effect, force or value’ gives a clue to its origins. It is in fact the word ‘e...

Beel v fester, fulminate

2 weeks, 3 days ago

The earliest quotation in A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue shows this word used in the sense of ‘to swell with moisture’. Androw of Wyntoun writes in his Orygynale Cronykil ...

EE n eye

3 weeks, 2 days ago

The plural of ‘ee’ is ‘een’. The ‘-en’ suffix to mark a plural was once much more common in both English and Scots than it is today. We still have oxen, and i...

TOD n a fox

4 weeks, 2 days ago

Tod appears early in place-names such as Todholerig, mentioned in the late twelfth century Registrum Episcopatus Glasguensis. Todd is also a personal name, although the fox himself is sometimes ...

DAFT adj foolish, frivolous

on 13th May 2013

This word provides a good illustration of the interaction between Scots and English. It first appears in the West Saxon dialect of Old English where it means gentle or meek. Perhaps such people ...

CRUD n curd, frog spawn

on 07th May 2013

Once shared with English, this word has undergone a change in the southern language but retains its older form in Scots. It appears in an early environmental poem by William Dunbar, in which he ...

COFT v (past tense, past participle) bought

on 30th Apr 2013

We borrowed coft from the Middle Dutch past tense ‘cofte’ and past participle ‘(ghe)coft’ of the verb ‘copen’ around the early fifteen century as evidenced by...