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SWEIR adj reluctant

on 02nd Mar 2010

Sweir covers a range of senses including slothful, inactive or unwilling to make an effort. People have not changed much since 1490, when John Irland wrote in  the Miroure of Wyssdome: &ldq...

HAUGH n a piece of level ground

on 22nd Feb 2010

Haugh, sometimes spelt hauch, also appears in Older Scots as halch. It usually rhymes with loch, but in some dialects the final consonant may disappear. It is a piece of level ground,...

INCH n island

on 15th Feb 2010

Inch comes from the Gaelic innes and is familiar to us in place-names.
We find it as such as early as 1198-9 in the Latin of the Lindores Charter: “totam insulam que vocatur Redinche...

BRAT n apron, rags

on 08th Feb 2010

Brat used to be a common word but is now rarely heard. It comes from an Old Northumbrian loanword of Celtic origins meaning a cloak. Robert Henryson at the end of the fifteenth century used it t...

MIDDEN n dunghill, refuse heap

on 03rd Feb 2010

This word comes from Old Norse. We can reconstruct the probable form ‘myki-dyngja’. Quotations in the Dictionary of the Scots Language show contrasting pictures of rural and urban mi...

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