joco adj. merry, cheerful, contented, pleased with oneself

Joco, which rhymes with 'below', will most certainly apply to some in the aftermath of recent elections. According to George Watson's Roxburghshire Word-Book (1923), it is 'often said of persons exhilarated by drink' and we find this usage in J. Service's Dr Duguid (1887): 'Getting a hue of toddy when we gaed hame to the hottle, we were quite joco owre the auld-time cracks'.
Being joco with someone could provoke suspicion, as in the following from the collected Buchan writings in Swatches o' Hamespun (1924): 'You twa are unco joco; fat's on the go? ... Annie has promised to be my wife'. But more often it indicates that someone feels at ease about a situation, as in Neil Munro's tale of Para Handy's Wedding (1906): 'No, no, herself here -- Mery, can keep the shop or leave it, chust ass it pleases hersel', it's aal wan to me; I'm quite joco'.
Although shortened from jocose 'full of jokes, playful', the word joco has taken on a range of meanings rather different from that of its parent. It first appears in written sources in the late nineteenth century and is still found in modern Scots. Glasgow University's Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech includes Robert Fairnie's A Wee Scran o Herrin (2001), in which we read: 'They daled the siller oot atween thaim an gaed hame richt joco, the baith o thaim wi a tanner in his pooch, an juist in time for denner'. Another example occurs in David Purves' The Reid Bul o Norroway (2001): 'awbodie wes even mair joco nor afore, an gret wes the lauchin an daffin that gaed on'. The word is relatively rare in Scottish newspapers, though a recent Sunday Post charity quiz posed the question 'if you're "joco" are you happy, sad or afraid?' Winners were no doubt very joco.

This week's Scots word was written by Dr Maggie Scott.